System Art or Sales Science
by Michael Karagosian
© 2000 MKPE Consulting All rights reserved worldwide
Published in the Daily at Infocomm 2000 by SCN
Blame it on Moore's Law. If it wasn't for the fact that computational power keeps doubling every 18 months, it would be business as usual. But now we're in the business of convergence. Convergence is everywhere. It's what makes your business my business, and my business your business. Or does it?
You can see it here at Infocomm, where members once focused their talent on video. Not that audio didn't exist, but it was just plain ol' audio. And for control? You just showed them where to push the buttons back in the closet. But now we have true blue Audio and Control. Customers don't want just any ol' audio, they want that 5.1 sound. And how about those fancy little LCD display things that let me push a button on the screen to turn down the lights?
It started out with centralized control. Gone are the days when you could just bang in your gear and leave room for the other guy. Centralized control means you have to know about the other guy's gear. And you have to be an expert on the control gear itself. That's a mountain of it's own to cross. But once you've crossed that mountain, there is no going back. Conquering control systems places the world at your feet. It gives system integration a whole new meaning.
So this is where Moore's Law gets you. More powerful and cheaper controllers have paved the way for expanding your business. You don't have to leave space for the other guy's equipment anymore. You're clever enough to have made the other guy's gear part of your sale. Your customer expects it of you. They want true integration in their systems.
The audio components themselves have made things easier, too. Gone are the days (well, they're nearly gone) when installing an audio system meant you had lots of little boxes to wire together. And there was probably that special custom board hanging off the back of the rack that only the "audio guy" knew about because he or she built it by hand.
But Moore's Law strikes here as well. As digital signal processing gets more powerful and lower in cost, it has become the technology of choice for audio systems. Digital audio systems not only are more controller-friendly, they are people friendly as well. That is, they CAN be people friendly if you program them to be that way. The audio guy just became a programmer who understands how to put the icons together and make your screens look pretty.
The great confidence builder with computer control and DSP-based audio systems is that you can stuff your rack and wire it up, and STILL make those few annoying last minute changes that customers love to ask for. More often than not, those changes have become a programming problem, not a wiring problem. You don't have to try and fit another box in the rack, or figure out how to make your customer happy with the gear they already bought.
That scenario works, at least, right up until those changes affect those little electro-mechanical devices called speakers. Here's an area where Moore's Law has had zero impact. At least, not yet. (Never say never, right?) We may have state-of-the-art silicon micro-machined moving mirrors in our projectors, but we still rely upon good ol' coils and magnets for our listening experience.
Speakers – you just hide them in the walls and ceiling, right? Well…this is where things get a little more complicated. It's not the same as video. With video, you can stage a shoot-out for your client and let them make a product decision based on their budget and their taste. Once your customer selects a model number, you have something solid to work with. You work out your geometry, you pick a lens and figure out on paper where you want things to go. You pass the information on to the builder, and feel confident that the end result will make your customer happy.
But then there's those pesky speakers. You can try the shootout idea, but unless you've figured out the impossible task of duplicating your customer's room acoustics in your listening room, they aren't going to get a real feel for the final product. And if your project is a conference room, watch out. Microphones and speakers have a famous game they like to play with each other. There's a little more to this than might meet the eye, or even the ear. No matter how much silicon you throw at it, good audio system design remains an art.
But you object. You say you can solve your audio problems with equalizers and delays and feedback suppressors and other processing tricks. You say that silicon comes through with a solution, after all! But silicon can't correct the problems presented by a room. It can't fix reflections and standing wave problems. It can't fix the relationship between a speaker and a microphone. It can't fix the relationship of multiple speakers in a 5.1 system to the ears of everyone in your audience.
Certainly, we have sophisticated tools to help. Silicon has certainly made its mark there. Knowing how to apply the tools to achieve good results requires knowledge and experience. One day we'll understand how to represent all the variables of a sound system in a future desktop super computer and model our systems with great confidence. But today, audio remains an art, where knowledge, experience, and a magic touch can make the difference between an OK system and a great system.
The difference between audio and video has caused even the manufacturing communities to evolve along different lines. Some of our best video products are sourced from overseas companies. It's a big business, originally fueled by consumers, but certainly not limited to consumers. These same companies are also the experts in the pro market. While the large companies with video expertise have attempted to take on audio, we still gravitate towards small creative companies for the best in sound. It is the difference between art and science. Good science can be repeated by anyone anywhere. Good art is difficult to repeat, period. Keep that in mind the next time you bang those speakers in wall.