Is anyone in the Commercial and Pro Audio industry also a sailor?

[timvg]

I asked this once before and my curiosity got the best of me again. I'm in the commercial audio industry. I'd like to find out who else works in my industry and also sails. My background is in sales & marketing management for companies like QSC and Rane.

Who do you work for?

 

[Marc Bergmueller]

Ex drummer here and have run sound for some other bands. I still have my Qsc rmx amps. Lately have been in to lighting and have quite a shows worth of intelligent lights run off the laptop. But when I sail, I want silence. Now if the ringing would just go...

 

[kenn]

I did the A/V geek thing in high-school, did some live sound, and a bit of recording and boom for film, but mainly I was a maintenance tech, and later technical director, of an audio post house in Toronto for several years, ending in the mid '90s. I also sold and serviced pro audio gear... including Rane. Nice stuff.

Marc, the ringing hasn't quite stopped here, either.

 

[palacegrand]

I was an active partner in a sound/lighting shop for a few years. Retail but also concert production & rentals. Been to NAMM.
Otherwise an audio end-user.
Currently (for 8 years now) selecting, managing and tech-ing entertainment for a world class attraction, including 64 consecutive concerts during the summer. Still do some audio for that, and onstage management. Otherwise I've worked continuously in the entertainment industry both on & off stage for (yikes!) 30 + years.
(Had some not so great experience with Rane X-overs, but love QSC)

Luckily I was/am pretty protective of the old "audio detection devices", so the ringing has more to do with blood pressure etc.

cheers,
jcm

 

[oldiesrocker2001]

I'm more in the consumer end of pro audio rather than sales since I've done sound on occasion, still perform regularly on Keys and Sax(my 2 worst instruments) and have my own 32track studio using mostly DTRS (pre pro-tools). The guys that come in to record or rehearse all agree that I own more music equip than "Sam or Ash" And I still have most of my QSC stuff including one studio amp that literally had smoke coming from it on a performance yet survived to rock another day. :2cool:

 

[Witzend]

I went to Berklee College of Music and Boston School of Electronic Music in Boston and studied composition. I use to tour many years ago with a show band, mainly in Canada and the Bahamas. I have a home recording studio, old Mac 16 bit stuff, DigiDesign and Studio Vision. If you interested please visit My MySpace page for a listen.
http://www.myspace.com/hollowellism

 

[larryw]

TASCAM is a division of the company I work for.

 

[Allan12210]

I was a research chemist for Memorex and then Ampex Corporation. I developed the coating formulations for audio mastering tape (456) and various audio cassette products (MRX3, HiBias, MPT). Anybody remember that stuff? Later I managed the development group and oversaw development of instrumentation and broadcast video tapes. Then the Japanese took over the magnetic tape industry in the US so I moved up to disc drives for computers. I went all the way from analog to digital.

 

[timvg]

Hi Larry,

I know Tascam well. How long have you been with them?

Tim

 

[larryw]

Tim,
I guess I should say TASCAM still is a division of TEAC Japan, but we, TEAC Aerospace, are no longer with the parent company and are owned by Goodrich now. I've been there five years.

 

[philwsailz]

Ampex 456, wow, *cobwebs blown off* I used both 2" and 1/4" 456...... Those 2" pancakes were a big investment for just over 10 minutes at 30 IPS... We ran it on a bunch of Leon Russel's old studio equipment... Those were the days....

I used to do some live sound work, contract work mostly and worked in a recording studio for a few years, hence the tape use...

In the way back machine, I have done FOH engineering for Garth Brooks, Herman's Hermits, Gary Pucket, Bobby Rush, All American Rejects, and lots of smaller regional acts, and ran stage sound for Branford Marsalis once too.

I now am employed in the consumer electronics industry, doing design and sales for marine and specialty markets audio systems.

 

[oldiesrocker2001]

Yeah, Phil those big reels were really expensive. I started out with tascam(little portastudio) and went to the next new thing - 1/4 inch 8 and then 1/2 inch 16, which were supposed to be the final word in tech(of course, back then I actually believed salesmen when I heard"this is the last keyboard you'll ever need to buy" too..). not as expensive but still a chunk of $$ for artists on a budget( if they had bux-delux, they went to the big studios anyway). I remember trying to get insurance for my little studio and quite a bit of trouble when the $$ count went well over 100K in the mid '80s of my self-owned equipment. To think back on that now, I was a Catholic school teacher making less than 4K per year at the time - good thing i was in pretty much the workingist band in Jersey then.

 

[timvg]

Phil,

So it is possible to escape the world of pro-audio, LOL. I've always found it interesting how few people in my industry are boaters. When I was at QSC (one of the largest pro audio equipment manufacturers), I believe that I was the only person in the company to have a boat (not counting wave runners). And probably one of the few to actually take vacation days, since sailboats go so slow and need many days to get to their destinations

 

[philwsailz]

Phil,

So it is possible to escape the world of pro-audio, LOL. I've always found it interesting how few people in my industry are boaters. When I was at QSC (one of the largest pro audio equipment manufacturers), I believe that I was the only person in the company to have a boat (not counting wave runners). And probably one of the few to actually take vacation days, since sailboats go so slow and need many days to get to their destinations

It is, but it takes work... Funny thing, I was getting tired of the late nights, the 30 hour days, the smoke, (I had quit wearing contacts) so I started weaning myself by going back to school to get a mechanical engineering degree. At the "almost graduation" point, I was offerd a job as a prosthetics engineer for human joint replacements. That would have been interesting, but I had a conflict, ( one more summeer course) that prevented the hire. I finished up that last course, and hah hah hah, my first professional career position after graduation was as an engineer, but it was an acoustic engineeering job..... Designing transducers and home and mobile audio systems... Yup, right back into the audio biz.... At one point, when going to the Crutchfield catalog, 70% of the product on the intro page of the loaded car enclosure system was my work.... You know, once it is in your blood....