While we come into this office every day, we’re still live sound guys,” laughs J.P. Boucher, COO. “We don’t want to read a 200-page manual on how to operate something and we know the people out there mixing or installing sound don’t either. Another thing that sets us apart is when you call, a real person will help you through any issue on any product or situation. And I wake up every day loving this job!”
“The roots of Ashly are in live sound, and evolved into manufacturing as Billy [Thompson] solved a lot of the problems he was hearing in the early days,” says Anthony Errigo, director of marketing. “We’ve always been about signal processing and amplification. We’re still about good-sounding audio carefully researched and designed. At the end of the day after 40 years, we’re still doing what we set out to do.”
Sound Company Origins
Thompson, who was interested in electronics since he was a kid, found himself at General Dynamics Corporation. At the large defense contractor he encountered “brilliant engineers” who became mentors. In the late 1960’s, he left and began “messing with” live sound just as the industry was emerging, providing audio for acts such as Chuck Mangione, Bonnie Raitt, Earth Wind & Fire, Peter Frampton and many more.
While mixing for local bands and festivals for [Rochester, NY-based] Brighton Sound in the early 1970s, he started working with better consoles and power amps. He first designed the “Loud Amp,” a 200-watt power amp that featured a simple circuit and limited parts count, making it easy to assemble, troubleshoot and service. It got noticed and the company grew — but not without some pain.
“We got in over our heads with a few venues,” Thompson tells. “There was one show with a crowd of about 60,000, and we simply didn’t have enough sound. Then the concert degenerated into a small riot. We lost some equipment that day and sustained damage — but we got out alive!”
Acutely aware of the problems with live sound of the day, Thompson, Dave Malloy and three others founded Ashly Audio in 1974. The company’s first line was the SE Series Mixer, which featured tunable channel EQ, master parametric EQ, LED meters and electronic crossovers. Ashly continued to build better boards with more inputs, with an expanded 40-input version going out on tours with the likes of Boston, Jimmy Buffett and Jackson Browne.
“Billy put a lot of effort into the original discrete VCA circuit of the SC-50 compressor/limiter that really had a positive impact on the industry,” says Boucher, who has been with Ashly since 1980. “Some compressor/limiters of the day were noisy and you could hear them ‘breathing.’ When set properly, Billy’s was totally transparent.”
The SC Series were Ashly’s first mass produced rack mount signal processors with upgraded circuitry, and many more followed. Ashly’s crossovers, which admitted were decidedly “unsexy,” became some of the first to feature mono and stereo 2-way, 3-way, and 4-way models with 12 dB/octave filter slopes.
May the FET Be With You
In 1982, Ashly’s FET-200 amp debuted, followed by the FET-500. The amps had fans in high places. The phone rang one day in 1984 and it was LucasFilm. In their quest to make movie theaters sound better, they wanted the FET-500 as part of the THX experience. Ashly became a “preferred vendor.” Later the improved FTX Series amps were adopted, and even outsold the FET Series, as Ashly rode the wave of THX multiplex cinema installations through the 1990’s.
“Our first analog graphics were the GQ-215, GQ-131, and GQ-231,” Boucher says. “Released as a family in January 1986, these quickly became a hit in monitor mix systems. The way the filters summed made them very smooth. They had a great sound and the internal mechanical design was very cool. We sold a lot of them!” In 1987, Ashly’s GQ Graphic EQ series foreshadowed the contemporary line of GQX and MQX graphic equalizers. Errigo says that these are still found in the equipment racks of rental, touring and production companies all over the world.
In 1991, the company released three new rack-mount mixers, the MM-508 eight-channel stereo mic/line mixer, the LM-308 eight-channel stereo line mixer and the MM-106 six-channel mono mic mixer. In 1995, the company continued its tradition of more powerful amplifiers with the MFA-6000 and 8000.
The MX mixer series was than improved, and since its inception, over 18,000 units have been sold. “To me, the MX-508 symbolizes the best of Ashly,” Errigo says, ‘with high quality, rugged design, meticulous testing and great support when you need it.” He adds that LX-308b is a preferred mixer by the guitar tech for Bruce Springsteen.
“We broke into the digital marketplace in 1997 with a piece that the analog guys could relate to,” Boucher says of the Protea 4.24G. “The pro guys were skeptical of digital and didn’t like the menu-driven stuff. So we created a digital graphic equalizer that gave you the advantage of presets and had other useful digital features, while maintaining the look and feel of analog.” It was a piece “that gave the ‘old ponytail guys’ the comfort of 31 bands but the ability to control up to 20 channels, presets, time delay and digital compressor/limiter. And it could be controlled remotely.”
In 2001, Protea Software was featured in the 4.24C — a 4×8 DSP speaker processor with a user-friendly interface for making quick setups without the need for a computer, though software control was also available. This was the start of something bigger than hardware.
In 2006, the programmable wall remote WR-5 was released. Fitting inside standard electrical boxes, wall remotes are the finishing touch to any install, adding a simple user control to a fixed dynamic audio system.
JAM Synergy
In 2008, Thompson sold Ashly to Montreal-based audio distribution company JAM Industries, and Thompson and Malloy retired. “Billy and Dave were both wonderful, creative people and great mentors to many of us who worked for them,” Boucher says. “They still both come to visit and continue to support us.”
While big company buying smaller company can be a death knell for innovation, that has not been the case with this acquisition. “JAM Industries brings us a wealth of resources and support. Not only financial but also through their many years of experience, contacts and influence in the industry. They have been key in helping us grow.” Boucher says.
In 2010 Ashly released PEMA, which Errigo calls “the Swiss army knife of audio processing and amplification.” It expanded the NE Series of 4- and 8-channel amps by making Protea DSP standard in all models. “PEMA tackles the challenges in just about any public facility,” Errigo says. “Most recently, our NX amps have broken new ground with programmable 70/100V and low-Z outputs, plus optional Ethernet and DSP.”
Boucher is looking forward to the next 40 years. “Ashly will increasingly focus on software development and networking, and how to best integrate that with great sounding audio,” he says. “We’ll continue to evolve.”
For more information, visit Ashly Audio at www.ashly.com.
