That's a Napoleon Dynamite reference, in case you're wondering. I'm writing to you from beautiful downtown Preston Idaho, two blocks from the high school and two blocks from Pedro's house.
<--- That's me soldering crossovers. I'm holding a soldering iron, not a bong. Plus I'm a lot bigger than that in real life.
Originally I'm from Louisiana. My last name is Cajun, and it's pronounced "le-ZHERN". The last syllable rhymes with "Verne". In fact I wanted to name my son Verne, and my daughter Lavergne, but my wife didn't find that as funny as I did.
I have three kids, all girls 'cept for two. Some of you may have seen my younger son in a Tim Burton movie. Briefly.
My journey down the slippery slope began with my first pair of transmission line speakers, built in the late 70's when I was in my late teens. I had almost no money, but managed to scrounge some B-stock KEF drivers in some kind of closeout deal from a local hi-fi store. Had to finish assembling the enclosures upstairs in my room (college student still mooching off mom & dad) because I calculated that they wouldn't fit up the stairway. I named them Ferdinand and Irving, after Ferdinand Porsche and Irving M. Fried. Turns out they wouldn't fit down the stairway either - when they were eventually replaced, I had to literally toss them out the window.
I worked for a while and then went back to college, with mixed results. You see, Larry Hitch of Madisound, Mike Dzurko of Audio Concepts, and Mark Sayer of Meniscus were selling me heroin. Thanks guys. I love you. Because of you I pretty much pissed away my college career, but I still love you.
After college I worked in the oil & gas industry, and if anything my addiction got worse. Two of my designs ended up in Speaker Builder magazine in the mid/late 80's. One of them was among the first "computer ready" speakers, in that it had negligible stray magnetic fields. You could place it flush up against your CRT monitor, and stack your floppy discs on top of it. This was before the first "shielded" drivers were available. It pretty much sucked, but that was beside the point.
Actually, most of my sixty-something DIY speaker designs from that era sucked. But we learn more from our failures than from our successes, so I just kept getting smarter and smarter (well that's the theory, anyway).
Some time in the 90's I got ready to build whatever my then-idea of the ultimate DIY speaker was. The parts cost came to nearly two grand. Well, I could buy a pair of used Quad 63 USA monitors for that... and so I did. Then in 1999 I upgraded to Sound Lab Millennium 1's. They cost more than my car. The slippery slope had steepened. I could see that I was terminally addicted, and so could my friends and family members. I think they were planning an intervention. I realized that I either had to join a twelve-step program... or become a dealer.
In 2002, give or take a couple years, I contacted Earl Geddes about this idea I had, which turned out to be similar to the idea he already had for the speaker that became the Summa. I contributed zero to the actual design of the Summa, but was fortunate enough to work with him on the project for a while. Even assembled a few pairs for him. I'm sure he lost money on me, considering all the time he invested, but he never gave me a bit of crap about it. He's the jedi, and if anything I design has merit, it's because I was his apprentice for a while.
In 2005 we moved to Idaho, and I intended to open a small high-end audio store. The nearly-fully-stocked store burned down just before opening, and because of small town bureaucratic bovine scatology, my business license had not yet been granted (I'd applied five weeks earlier). No business license = no business insurance. Watching my business burn from across the street was a pivotal moment. I didn't begin to have enough money for another try - it was all in the store. That is when I decided to become a speaker manufacturer. At this point the slippery slope was pretty much vertical. Resistance was clearly futile.
Designing and building speakers that someone else might actually buy, at a price that returned a profit, meant that I had to up my game bigtime. Fortunately I still had a few pieces of nice gear at home so I sold them and bought the best loudspeaker measurement/modelling suite I could afford, the LinearX LMS + LMP system.
I won't bore you here with my take on speaker design. You can read most of it an article that Larry Borden of Stereo Times wrote, here: http://www.stereotimes.com/comm081710.shtml
And if you really have insomnia, here's one that I wrote: http://www.hifizine.com/2010/06/the-controlled-pattern-offset-bipole-loudspeaker/
When the economy tanked a few years ago, my crystal ball told me that expensive toys were going to be hard to sell, so I started building high-end bass guitar cabinets (tool of the trade, falls into a different category). That got me through the lean years, and I still build them, though not as much as I did there for a while.
All three of my kids are musicians. My daughter plays bass through a cab I built whose previous owner was Hugh McDonald of Bon Jovi.
At some point I crossed paths with studio designer Jeff Hedback, and for some crazy reason he believed my propaganda and had me build custom studio monitors for a few of his clients. Those projects are the ones that scare me the most because they're going to be used all day long, day in and day out, to play a very crucial role in the success or failure of a business. Any little problems that I don't catch are going to either drive their owners nuts or screw up their mastering and hurt their business.
My real secret weapon is my wife. Second wife, actually. No I'm not a polygamist; I'm a serial monogamist. Anyway, she's my portable real-time analog spectrum analyzer. Nothing goes out the door without her approval.
At this point I'm working on two interesting loudspeaker projects that involve the inventions of other designers, who have entrusted me to develop their ideas into marketable products for the high-end home audio market. [shameless plug] At least one of these will show up at the 2013 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, room 1100. [/shameless plug]
A couple of hours ago my older son, "Verne", told me that he's applying for a job working with paraplegic kids. I am so proud of him, seriously. He's trying to make the world a better place. I'm just trying to make the world a louder place.
That 'bout brings us up to date.
Vote for Pedro.
<--- That's me soldering crossovers. I'm holding a soldering iron, not a bong. Plus I'm a lot bigger than that in real life.
Originally I'm from Louisiana. My last name is Cajun, and it's pronounced "le-ZHERN". The last syllable rhymes with "Verne". In fact I wanted to name my son Verne, and my daughter Lavergne, but my wife didn't find that as funny as I did.
I have three kids, all girls 'cept for two. Some of you may have seen my younger son in a Tim Burton movie. Briefly.
My journey down the slippery slope began with my first pair of transmission line speakers, built in the late 70's when I was in my late teens. I had almost no money, but managed to scrounge some B-stock KEF drivers in some kind of closeout deal from a local hi-fi store. Had to finish assembling the enclosures upstairs in my room (college student still mooching off mom & dad) because I calculated that they wouldn't fit up the stairway. I named them Ferdinand and Irving, after Ferdinand Porsche and Irving M. Fried. Turns out they wouldn't fit down the stairway either - when they were eventually replaced, I had to literally toss them out the window.
I worked for a while and then went back to college, with mixed results. You see, Larry Hitch of Madisound, Mike Dzurko of Audio Concepts, and Mark Sayer of Meniscus were selling me heroin. Thanks guys. I love you. Because of you I pretty much pissed away my college career, but I still love you.
After college I worked in the oil & gas industry, and if anything my addiction got worse. Two of my designs ended up in Speaker Builder magazine in the mid/late 80's. One of them was among the first "computer ready" speakers, in that it had negligible stray magnetic fields. You could place it flush up against your CRT monitor, and stack your floppy discs on top of it. This was before the first "shielded" drivers were available. It pretty much sucked, but that was beside the point.
Actually, most of my sixty-something DIY speaker designs from that era sucked. But we learn more from our failures than from our successes, so I just kept getting smarter and smarter (well that's the theory, anyway).
Some time in the 90's I got ready to build whatever my then-idea of the ultimate DIY speaker was. The parts cost came to nearly two grand. Well, I could buy a pair of used Quad 63 USA monitors for that... and so I did. Then in 1999 I upgraded to Sound Lab Millennium 1's. They cost more than my car. The slippery slope had steepened. I could see that I was terminally addicted, and so could my friends and family members. I think they were planning an intervention. I realized that I either had to join a twelve-step program... or become a dealer.
In 2002, give or take a couple years, I contacted Earl Geddes about this idea I had, which turned out to be similar to the idea he already had for the speaker that became the Summa. I contributed zero to the actual design of the Summa, but was fortunate enough to work with him on the project for a while. Even assembled a few pairs for him. I'm sure he lost money on me, considering all the time he invested, but he never gave me a bit of crap about it. He's the jedi, and if anything I design has merit, it's because I was his apprentice for a while.
In 2005 we moved to Idaho, and I intended to open a small high-end audio store. The nearly-fully-stocked store burned down just before opening, and because of small town bureaucratic bovine scatology, my business license had not yet been granted (I'd applied five weeks earlier). No business license = no business insurance. Watching my business burn from across the street was a pivotal moment. I didn't begin to have enough money for another try - it was all in the store. That is when I decided to become a speaker manufacturer. At this point the slippery slope was pretty much vertical. Resistance was clearly futile.
Designing and building speakers that someone else might actually buy, at a price that returned a profit, meant that I had to up my game bigtime. Fortunately I still had a few pieces of nice gear at home so I sold them and bought the best loudspeaker measurement/modelling suite I could afford, the LinearX LMS + LMP system.
I won't bore you here with my take on speaker design. You can read most of it an article that Larry Borden of Stereo Times wrote, here: http://www.stereotimes.com/comm081710.shtml
And if you really have insomnia, here's one that I wrote: http://www.hifizine.com/2010/06/the-controlled-pattern-offset-bipole-loudspeaker/
When the economy tanked a few years ago, my crystal ball told me that expensive toys were going to be hard to sell, so I started building high-end bass guitar cabinets (tool of the trade, falls into a different category). That got me through the lean years, and I still build them, though not as much as I did there for a while.
All three of my kids are musicians. My daughter plays bass through a cab I built whose previous owner was Hugh McDonald of Bon Jovi.
At some point I crossed paths with studio designer Jeff Hedback, and for some crazy reason he believed my propaganda and had me build custom studio monitors for a few of his clients. Those projects are the ones that scare me the most because they're going to be used all day long, day in and day out, to play a very crucial role in the success or failure of a business. Any little problems that I don't catch are going to either drive their owners nuts or screw up their mastering and hurt their business.
My real secret weapon is my wife. Second wife, actually. No I'm not a polygamist; I'm a serial monogamist. Anyway, she's my portable real-time analog spectrum analyzer. Nothing goes out the door without her approval.
At this point I'm working on two interesting loudspeaker projects that involve the inventions of other designers, who have entrusted me to develop their ideas into marketable products for the high-end home audio market. [shameless plug] At least one of these will show up at the 2013 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, room 1100. [/shameless plug]
A couple of hours ago my older son, "Verne", told me that he's applying for a job working with paraplegic kids. I am so proud of him, seriously. He's trying to make the world a better place. I'm just trying to make the world a louder place.
That 'bout brings us up to date.
Vote for Pedro.
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