Live music is the new record business. And Live Nation is the new Warner Brothers. Live sound has now become the lifeblood of the music industry, but what makes this shift unusual is that it has taken place during unprecedented economic strife.
It’s a situation that Daniel Nix, vice president of sales at Bosch’s Communications Systems Division (a division that includes the Bosch Public Address & Conferencing, Dynacord Electro-Voice, Klark Teknik, Midas, RTS, and Telex brands) has pondered deeply.
“We treat the live sound market with long-term perspective, and we always have,” says Nix. “If you make decisions in this current economic state, you’re making short-term decisions. And one of our strengths has always been our value proposition. Suppose, for example, that 10 years ago you purchased an EV X-Line line array system. Today, you can utilize our FIR-Drive system with those same cabinets and, to quote some of our partners, adding FIR filters is basically like buying a new rig. As DSP and driver technology improves, we continue to update and improve the performance of our products, rather than limiting our customers’ choice to buying a whole new set of hardware.
“When our mid-sized XLC line array was first launched, we gave customers the option to upgrade the high-frequency driver,” Nix continues. “Now you can upgrade those same boxes with a DVX woofer package — our latest generation of high performance speakers. We don’t stop developing drivers, and we don’t limit our customers’ options. And, using our NetMax N8000-1500 control and supervision platform, you can run that XLC rig with the fastest processor on the market, equipped with our FIR-Drive system. That’s our value proposition: instead of replacing your rig every few years, upgrade in phases, as needed, in step with your business’s budget and needs.
“We saw a lot of success with that approach this year,” explains Nix. “At the start of the touring season, many acts went out with the same rigs they used last year. By providing incremental updates as an alternative to complete system replacements, we offer a long-term strategy that couples prudent financial expenditure with no compromise, state-of-the-art performance. The power of DSP processing is growing exponentially, as is our ability to deploy FIR filters and improve transfer functions. We work hard to maximize the performance of our boxes, enhancing every nuance possible. All these are relatively inexpensive upgrades you can add to your system right now. People are embracing that, and we believe that working model will remain intact after the economy picks up again, simply because it makes sense.”
“We have great competition in the live sound market, and there are a lot of good boxes out there. There are many manufacturers that I respect and the quality of products across our industry has reached a point where there are many excellent choices available. But one of the key areas in which we differ to our competitors is that we are a component manufacturer, and that gives us a tremendous advantage. We design and build or own drivers, our own transducers, and that is a rare thing these days. In the past, engineers could cross-rent multiple boxes from three different companies to create a rig, and every single batch sounded different. Being a component manufacturer allows us to think long-term, build products long-term, and upgrade in small, precise increments. For example, we can bring an updated Hydra waveguide to market quickly after developing it, for seamless integration into existing enclosures.”
When Bosch acquired Electro-Voice in 2006, they we well aware of EV’s core competencies in DSP and transducers, seeing the potential for developing the Bosch lines of mass notification and life safety systems with technologies developed by the American brand. “We have one of the largest anechoic chambers in North America,” Nix continues, “and when we added Bosch-developed software and tooling to the equation, along with our engineering staff, some serious acceleration in R&D took place. We have an incredible group of talented engineers — senior engineers with industry experience second to none and some very smart younger members of the team. Kids who dream in ones and zeroes working alongside veterans who’ve hand-built woofers. You mix that group together with the influx of resources from Bosch and the results are amazing. We have been revamping our components ever since joining
Bosch — building engines as opposed to building the cars — steadily helping our customers stay at the forefront of the business. Of course, in the near future you’ll see complete new vehicles coming from us, but we’ll always offer the upgrade options to help our customers extract every last ounce of value out of their rigs.”
The automotive analogies are apt — Mercedes keeps its body styles for a decade, but under the hood the changes are significant. Nix notes another shift, away from traditional exposition venues. “We haven’t been to AES in years, and we formally exited LDI five years ago,” he says. “At InfoComm we had a 30,000-square-foot demo room, one side dedicated to all our live sound products. We believe that we get a lot of live sound pick-up at InfoComm.”
Nix says the synergy between the live-sound and installed-sound brands at Bosch will continue to grow.
“There are terms we use,” he says, “like synergy and convergence, which have been around for a long time, but there’s no denying that DSP, simple protocols, smarter systems, systems that talk to each other, and systems that talk to other parts of technologies are the designs of the future. That’s why InfoComm is our key show. The lines are blurring as AV technologies merge on single control platforms. Markets continue to evolve in step with green initiatives and new-code-compliance. What we’re seeing right now is the co-development of future products. On the install side we have already seen some very large projects with Bosch and Electro-Voice, combining cameras, security, access, paging, and high-end live sound in churches, casinos, and convention centers — there a lot of opportunities. We’re being pushed and pulled by a lot of emerging and changing markets, and some of them are outside the traditional AV realm, and that’s great. We want to cater to them all.”
Nix stresses that under Bosch ownership, each brand in the Communications Systems Division family will retain its autonomy. “All the above points rest upon the quality and reputation of our brands — the credibility they bring to our customers. We can restructure our sales and marketing structure to more effectively serve these changing markets, but at the core our brand values must stay strong, constant, and predictable. That being said, it’s important for people to know is that Midas and Klark Teknik are still owned by Bosch,” he says, referring to last July’s announcement creating regional sales venture Midas Consoles North America with JAM Industries.
“What we chose to do is shift the entire global sales responsibility to Midas’s home base in Kidderminster [U.K.],” says Nix. “You have the exact same people you’ve always worked with, and they’re now responsible for sales across the globe. Midas is a focused product; you don’t come out with a $289,000 desk and sell 10 a day. Sales like that require great focus, and that’s the impetus for this decision. That’s why we diversify sales throughout the globe. Lynn Martin [JAM] and his team fully understand the markets they serve. So when it comes to managing each part of the globe, the management will be done from Kidderminster; they only choose partners who know how to manage their regional markets.”
The direction of technology and economics will continue to be critical in the upcoming years. And though the recession will likely have been declared over by Q4 of this year, the newfound importance of concert sound to the larger music industry — and the turbulence that AEG Live and Live nation are experiencing this year — means that dollar signs and cosines must coexist more closely than ever. And as Bosch, EV, and Midas continue to collaborate on tech platforms, the outcomes of their partnership could be larger than the sum of their parts.
