I received the new speaker yesterday and noticed the extra effort in packaging the speaker. I really appreciate Norh's commitment to service and also think Namphung is wonderful to deal with. The synthetic marble 6.9's I have purchased are more than I had hoped for- stunning sound and looks. I will recommend your products to my friends in the St. Louis audio community and in posts on audiocircle.com....

Thank you Michael and Namphung for offering such a unique product and backing it up with terrific service.

-Tracy Beckett

I wrote last month about the contract that NorhTec has with Pay By Touch.  NorhTec now has orders for over 6,000 computers and they are working very hard to complete these orders.  Currently, NorhTec is considering building a new factory about 90 kilometers outside of Bangkok.  The location under consideration is the 304 Industrial Park 2 area.  It is my hope to be able to convince the board of directors to combine nOrh and NorhTec and relocate everyone at the new facility.

Our Webmaster, Shaf, has relocated to Thailand. He is now going to Asia Institute of Technology (AIT).  Looking at their website, probably he should help them out as well.  Shaf has found himself pretty much without bandwidth in his dorm so while we make adjustments and try to work out getting him a 300 baud modem (!) or something faster than he has in his dorm, this month's webpage won't be a lot different than the previous month.

Upcoming Stereo Le Amp 2

Yuth has been working with our suppliers on a new version of the Le Amp. The problem for us in the previous build was that the case cost us so much money that we lost money on ever unit we built.  We have been looking how to reduce the costs without impacting the product quality.  The new version will have dual power supplies so it will continue to be two separate amps but housed in a single cabinet.  Yuth has also been working on an optional high-quality power cable that will add only a slight amount to the cost.  

It has been slow for us to introduce new products. This is mostly because Namphung, Yuth, and Lek are now working full time for NorhTec and that has been a very exhausting but very worthwhile effort.  My goal is to make both companies very successful and to manage them  both directly.

nOrh suffered from the economy after the dot.com bubble bursting.  I personally suffered financially.  My personal shares went from over $5 million USD to about $200,000 after the dot.bubble burst.  nOrh also took a hit after September 11.  We did what we had to do and that was to scale back our costs and focus on bringing out products that were more affordable.  We introduced our SE 9 and SE 18 tube amps. Both of these have been very successful.  We also introduced the nOrh 3.0 which is now our best selling product.  

The person we contracted to build Le Amp 2 ran off with the money. This was a very hard blow for us.  The good news is that we have survived, we continue to be debt free and have a very good inventory of parts to continue shipping products.

I hope that after Christmas, by combining the company, we will be able to do some new product development and that we will work jointly on projects that combine computers and audio.

Norh 3.0 Prism

Pictured above is nOrh's very popular nOrh 3.0.  I personally have 7 nOrh 3.0 Prisms.  The Prisms is the easiest to position speakers I have ever seen.  The nOrh 3.0s  is the best sounding and best looking economical speaker available. I use the nOrh 3.0 Prisms with my SE 9 attached to my computer.  I spend more time in my office than I do my living room.

The combination of nOrh 3.0s and the SE 9.0 is one of the best sounding  audio systems possible under $700.00.  If you have any friends who are about to buy an cheap combo system or even a high priced low-end system, you have a responsibility to let them know about the SE 9.0 and nOrh 3.0 combination.


The nOrh 4.0s continue to be one of our best selling speakers.  We offer the 4.0 in both walnut and rosewood.  The nOrh 4.0s are among the best sounding and most beautiful speakers under $500.00 a pair.  They are hand carved from solid wood.  Most speakers in this price range use very cheap Asian drivers, poorly designed crossovers and are made of chipboard and vinyl covering.  The nOrh 4.0 uses real wood and uses Vifa drivers.

One of the most striking examples of what a great value nOrh Loudspeakers continues to be is the pricing for the nOrh 7.0s.  At that time, we made only a handful of the nOrh 7.0s. The nOrh 7.0s used the very expensive Scanspeak drivers and because we bought them in small quantities, the cost to build them was very high.  Today, the Scanspeak drivers are even more expensive. The US Dollar has dropped about 30% against the Euro so Scanspeak drivers are so expensive that only the world's most expensive loudspeakers use them.

In 1997 we sold the nOrh 7.0 for  $2,100.00 and this didn't include shipping.  Today, we sell the Classic 7.0s for $995.00 and this includes shipping or we have the Synthetic Marble 7.0s for $2000.00 -- including shipping.

How is it possible that the 7.0s are less expensive today than they were 7 years ago?  The main reason is that nOrh was never set up to be a money making company.  Our goal was to win respect respect and put people to work.  Quite frankly, until going back and looking at our previous web pages, we had forgotten that we lowered the prices of the speakers and we have struggled very hard to continue to send out our speakers even though costs have continued to rise.

The nOrh 7.0s are an amazing value at the current prices.  I doubt that there are any loudspeakers under $5,000 per pair that use these high quality Scanspeak drivers.  The nOrh 7.0 received many outstanding reviews and given the rising costs of high quality components, oil, labor and the declining US dollar, the 7.0s are a far better deal today than they were 7 years ago.

Writing this month's newsletter certainly proves that the price of our Classic 7.0 wood loudspeakers is priced way too low.  After this month, we certainly have to raise that price.  Imagine, 7 years ago, we sold the same loudspeaker for $2,100 and didn't include shipping and now we offer the same loudspeaker for $995.00.  I will have to take care of that sometime.

As I am not a native of Thailand and Thai is my second language, I am often looking for sources of information in English -- my first language. For years, I have used streaming audio as a source of getting information directly from radio broadcasts from the United States. I am able to listen to music as well as news while it is broadcasted real time.

Last year, I amazed some of my friends showing them that using a HP IPAQ 6365, I could stream audio over GPRS and listen to radio from the United States just as easily as I could carry a transistor around. Now a new technology makes it even easier to listen to broadcasts from around the world -- no matter where you are.

The technology is called Podcasting. Podcasting allows users to subscribe to files automatically. The primary use is to allow people to download files into portable MP3 players. The name Podcasing comes from combining broadcasting with the name of Apple Computer’s iPod. This name might confuse some people to believe that you need to have an Apple iPod to listen to Podcasts. Any device that can support MP3 audio files can be used to play Podcasts.

Podcasting piggybacks on the same technology that allows bloggs to work, RSS file format. Adam Curry, best known for having been an early VJ on MTV proposed the idea of Podcasting and has thus inherited the nickname Podfather.

In order to receive Podcasts, a software package, referred to as a podcatcher is required. The most popular podcatcher is the open source iPodder. iPodder is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and BSD. A Java version of iPodder is available called jPodder.

Once you have your podcatcher software, you will be able to choose from a variety of subscription offerings in your iPodder Podcast directory. You can select from hundreds of different podcasts and subscribe to them. You can set iPodder so that it will automatically download new podcasts at a specified time. You can then sync your downloaded MP3 files to your portable MP3 player.

ABC News (US) and ABC (Australian) and NBC (US) offer daily podcasts. With a little searching, it is likely that you will find a variety of podcasts in your local language.

Podcasting is very inexpensive to do so it is very likely that in the future, very local community podcasts will be likely. It will be possible for churches, town meetings, school board meetings and other community based services to be shared internationally using podcasts.

Several radio stations are now offering podcasts. Some of these are focused on music while others offer entertainment and talk programs.

The world of podcasting is new and growing very fast. Ex-pats will find that podcasting is a very practical way to keep up with events back home and that the technology allows you to take your news, music and information with you just about anywhere.

Through listening to podcasts (see above), I learned about something very exciting that is happening across the Internet, Creative Commons Music. Creative Commons is an updated way for artists to protect their work yet gives permission up front on how the music can be used.  In the past, the © symbol was used to protect original works. Without the © symbol were automatically assumed to be open sourced.  In the US, Congress passed a law that stated that works no longer needed to have the © symbol in order to be protected.  Therefore, as soon as a person finished writing or saving a work, it was automatically copyrighted.  The problem is that while the © assures that "all rights are reserved", it doesn't provide what permissions are given.  Therefore, we wind up with the confusing and conflicting set of circumstances where a library can loan out a CD or a book but an individual may or may not be able to share music with a friend.  Creative Commons also has a symbol of their own. Their symbol looks like the © symbol but has two letter c's in the circle.  To learn more information on Creative Commons, you can go to their website at www.creativecommons.org. 

I learned about Creative Commons Music by listening to the very entertaining but geeky podcast, Slashdot Review.  Slashdot Review  provides an entertaining overview of what was covered on the technology news website Slashdot. Slashdot is so popular that being mentioned on the site creates what is called the "Slashdot effect".  That means that websites become bombarded with new hits once the site is mentioned.  A couple years ago, NorhTec was mentioned on Slashdot and we got 700,000 hits in one day.

At the end of every Slashdot Review podcast, they play a music that is free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.  What is surprising is that I have liked just about every song they have selected.  These songs can all be downloaded in MP3 format for free.

Of the bands I listened to on Slashdot Review, my favorite was "Who's Tumbling Now?" by the Minnesota band FLAVOR.  What is cool is that if you want to download this song, you can do so without restriction.  Simply go to the following website (http://www.garageband.com/artist/genuineflavor/songs), select the song "Who's Tumblin Now" on the right. Right click on the MP3 symbol in the box labled DOWNLOAD to download the song.  If you like this song, you might want to grab "Secret Solution", another song by FLAVOR that you can download without restriction.  Thank you very much FLAVOR for recording this song and letting me listen to it.  Thank you for allowing me to share this song with my readers. FLAVOR has one more song available for download which is "Where here is".  While the first two songs are funky sounding, "Where here is" is sort of a cross between Led Zepplin and the Moody Blues. 

FLAVOR is by no means the only artists sharing their music using the Creative Commons Music Licensing Scheme.  Another fantastic song mentioned on Slashdot Review is "Summer Days" by Redd_Soul.  If you like soulful tunes by Marvin Gay or Stevie Wonder, then you really should download Summer Days at http://www.garageband.com/artist/Redd_Soul. FrodoCPU was a band from LA that was also highlighted on Slashdot Review.  FrodoCPU's stated goal is a studio band that is focused on trying to create music with the production values of Steely Dan.  The music is quite good if not outstanding.  You can download five songs from their album at http://www.garageband.com/artist/frodocpu.  The best song for download is It's Time (Club Remix). 

For people who are more pop oriented, Tweachzone is the product of independent producer and songwriter Craig Neil.   The song, Everytime I go Away is a very slickly produced Pop song that is good enough to have you running the lyrics through your head after two or three plays.  You can download two songs from Tweachzone at  http://www.garageband.com/artist/craigneil.

The Creative Commons licensing approach is a fantastic alternative to the Nazi style copyright enforcement of the RIAA. In contrast to the RIAA's approach of making criminals out of college students who try to share music, the Creative Commons licensing approach encourages people to listen and share music.  The artists who release under this license retain their creative rights and only the artists can legally sell their works. 

In the spirit of Creative Commons, please feel free to share this article with anyone.