An interview with former Marantz designer, Ken Ishiwata, on his colourful career
Former Marantz designer Ken Ishiwata gives us the inside story of his colourful career in hi-fi
Few hi-fi engineers have the public profile of Ken Ishiwata. After more than 40 years at Marantz, he’s something of a celebrity, and is often mobbed at hi-fi shows with people clamouring for his attention.
His demos are renowned for their obsessive set-up and, while he’s known for his extrovert dress sense, it’s the quality of products he’s been involved with that have earned such respect.
KI Signature products – the result of Marantz letting Ishiwata hone those products to his taste – have etched their way into hi-fi legend. Few companies give their engineers this kind of freedom or public exposure. We caught up with Ishiwata just before news broke that he was leaving Marantz – a perfect time to get the inside story on a colourful career.
WHF: What originally made you interested in hi-fi?
KI: I was learning to play the violin, and wanted to hear old master musicians like Jascha Heifetz and David Fyodorovich Oistrakh play. At the time, hi-fi systems were too expensive, therefore I had to build my own. I was 10 years old when I made my first tube mono amplifier.
What was your first job in hi-fi?
I was radio communications officer on a commercial ship, but apart from seeing different countries, I wasn’t enjoying the job. Sony and Pioneer approached me, looking for an engineer who could speak English, because they were expanding their business outside Japan.
Sony wasn’t looking for an audio engineer, but Pioneer was. That’s why I took the job at Pioneer, on the condition they sent me to Europe after a period of working in Japan. At that time, Pioneer was purely an audio company, and together with Sansui and Kenwood, it was expanding its audio business worldwide. I came to Europe in 1968 and helped to establish Pioneer Europe in Belgium a couple of years later.
We helped develop Pioneer’s products by giving a European point of view. The radio tuner circuits produced here were better than what we were building, and we learnt so much from Braun’s designs.
Another important thing was safety regulations in the Nordic countries. They were strict, but good. This was an area where the Japanese designs were not strong and therefore we could help a great deal.
How did you end up working at Marantz?
Marantz Europe contacted me in 1977, as they needed someone technical who also understood European business. I went there for an interview, but they said, “Mr. Ishiwata, you are too expensive for us.” I didn’t want to compromise, so I went home and forgot about it.
A couple of months later they contacted me again and said, “We can’t afford you in the European organisation, but Marantz Japan still want you.” After that, I joined the company in 1978 as tech/commercial coordinator.
What was your job role there?
I was Brand Ambassador, but I was fully involved in product development. I did the sound tuning of stereo electronics in my listening room in Eindhoven.
I also did presentations at hi-fi shows and distributor events. Commercial presentations are always interesting because you get to interact with people who have different tastes – we learnt so much from those encounters. I enjoyed those shows and demos very much.
What’s the product development process?
Product development has changed a lot over time, especially from my early years at Marantz Japan. At that time we assigned each product to a specific engineer and I followed up every detail with them in two or three-week meetings in Japan. Today at Sound United [Marantz’s parent company], they do things differently, since they have both Marantz and Denon products to develop.
How do you choose the products for the KI treatment?
The original KI was the CD-63II KI Signature. We didn’t have any intention of making it at first, but the original CD-63II was a very musical player, and I was curious to find out its full potential. I wasn’t thinking we would actually put it into production. It was just an exercise.
I spent some time optimising it and when I felt happy, I demonstrated it to some people. They were flabbergasted! I knew it wasn’t a neutral sounding player, but it was so musical, you could enjoy listening to music forever with it. I still get requests from people wanting one.
Which products have been the hardest to develop?
At the beginning of the 1980s, Marantz became part of Philips. At that time I was developing speakers for the European markets. The drive units were developed with a Japanese OEM manufacturer called Tonegen, and we came up with some wonderful transducers. These were used in speakers such as the LD-50. However, Philips forced me to use Philips drivers, which weren’t up to Marantz’s standards. It was impossible to refuse, so I had to come up with speakers using those drivers. Because of this, our speaker business went down.
The development work I had to do with Philips drivers was most difficult. It wasn’t a pleasure working like that. Before Philips’s time, our peak speaker production was more than 260,000 units per year, all produced in Belgium. If we’d have kept this speaker business then Marantz would be totally different today. I enjoy designing speakers, it’s a pity I can’t do that anymore.
Do you have a preference for DSD or PCM music files?
I’m sure you already know the answer – I prefer DSD! I’ve never been crazy about using PCM for music. It uses a constant number of bits and a fixed sampling rate – for example, 24-bit/192khz. Every sample uses the full 24-bits, regardless of the requirement of the signal. I’ve long recommended the use of variable bit rates to avoid waste. As it is now, as much as 90 per cent of a 24-bit/192khz data stream is wasted. On top of that, the sound of DSD is close to the analogue original. That’s is why we decided to convert all PCM signals to (1-bit) DSD inside the DAC of our KI Ruby player.
Can a DAC’S performance be judged from its specifications?
Specs don’t tell you about sound quality – not just for DACS, for everything. They are based on static measurements, but music is dynamic and there are other parameters that influence performance.
The biggest problem of DACS of today is not specs. If you only look at them, you’ll feel confident it will sound good.
Back in the 80s, we had DACS using BIMOS technology, but today all the ICS are based on CMOS. With CMOS you can get high speed, low consumption and high specifications. Today’s handheld devices and computers require those things; but for serious audio? I doubt it.
You know musical dynamics require power, more power means high consumption… well, it’s just my view.
Measurement or listening... which takes priority?
All measurements we do are static. Yes, they are essential to find out how amplifiers are working, but they don’t tell you about the sound quality. We have spent so many hours in my listening room in Eindhoven listening and fine tuning all Marantz products. Sometimes that listening forces us to change our basic design, despite the fact that the measurements are okay.
What are your favourite Marantz products?
I believe you can already guess which products I would pick. Yes, my choice is very simple. It’s the KI Ruby SACD player and partnering amplifier.
The player has a unique 1-bit DSD processing technology that makes all types of music so enjoyable. The amplifier has a high-quality phono stage. You can use a turntable with cartridges as good as a Koetsu Red Signature or IKEDA 9C III moving-coil cartridge and make the most of them.
“If we’d have kept the speaker business then Marantz would be a totally different company today”
And your favourite nonMarantz products?
It has to be Audio Research’s SP-10 preamplifier and Mark Levinson 20.5 monoblocs driving Apogee’s DIVA Speaker System. Crazy, eh?
What’s the future of hi-fi?
As we are no longer bound by disc formats, I strongly believe we can improve performance. However, it won’t be easy to keep the standard of the original recordings high. We have to educate musicians to do that.