034 INTERVIEW
Avalon, Hollywood
XS The Nightclub, Las Vegas - photo by Barbara Kraft
Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas - photo by Russell MacMasters
Light, Las Vegas
in the New England area.” The delineation of responsibilities was clear. “It was just understood that I would handle all the technological aspects. I always enjoyed fi guring things out, and with a nightclub you get to see people’s reactions immediately.” Indeed, the club became his laboratory, a proving ground for new ideas. “Our success and our revenue stream were tied into the success of the club, and I wanted to have a nightclub that was better than any other,” as John explained. “I recognised the fact that the sound, the visuals, and the overall experience were an important part of that.” And this quest for better sound was never-ending. “My goal was always for people on the dancefl oor to feel a song like they had never felt it before, even if it was something they’d heard a million times before.” But even systems from the best of the growing pro audio industry proved unable to deliver that powerful, visceral feeling and this led to another epiphany. “I realised that the holy grail for loudspeaker engineers was to create the most accurate, spectrally balanced sound possible,” said John. “They wanted a loudspeaker that would make it sound like the symphony or the rock band is right there. And in their world, these loudspeakers always lived on the left and right hand side of the stage. And then it hit me on a dancfl oor, you don’t want or need accurate. The ratio of low-mid information to high information needs to be lopsided. It can’t be one to one.” Enlisting his network of friends from MIT, John began experimenting with building his own systems. “I decided I was going to build the system as best as I could, addressing all the problems that were inherent in a dancefl oor design. Without using any real mathmatics or physics, I intuitively made a ratio of what I thought it ought to be. I had spectrum analysers and I knew what I wanted to get from the system. I just kept adding devices until I got the curve I wanted. It didn’t look very pretty, but it did exactly what I wanted it to do.” It was a conversation on a transcontinental fl ight that brought John to the next phase in loudspeaker design, as he explained: “I was sitting next to Ken Berger. EAW had done one of its fi rst sound systems for Spit, and we’d known
www.mondodr.com
“Isaac always had a lot of big ideas. He was always thinking ahead. And he was very intent on not having a
business that exploited culture, he wanted to create culture.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144