"There is not a professional audio engineer out there today that doesn't touch something Kenton Forsythe is directly responsible for," says Terry Lowe, Parnelli Awards executive producer and publisher of FOH. "We are proud to honor him with the Audio Innovator Award at this year's Parnellis."
Since the early 1970s to this year's InfoComm, Forsythe has continually been the architect of products that have been embraced by the worlds of touring, installation and dance clubs. Far too many to list, he and the company he founded, Eastern Acoustic Works, have provided sound reinforcement from Vatican Square to the historical live concert by Paul McCartney at Red Square in Moscow.
"Anyone who has worked in pro audio knows or has listened to Kenton's extraordinary loudspeaker designs," says Ted Leamy, Parnelli Board Member and COO of Pro Media/UltraSound. "He is one of only a handful of individuals that have shaped and defined what is considered state-of-the-art in loudspeaker design."
"There was a time when sound reinforcement involved constructing clustered sound systems from core component parts," says Jeff Rocha, VP of EAW. "Kenton's vision of developing integrated loudspeaker solutions represented a fundamental shift in design philosophy that revolutionized the industry. He then layered in the notion of true three-way design with dedicated, horn loaded cone midrange devices assuring that vocal reproduction had very low distortion and was unencumbered by crossover transitions. In fact, many aspects of system design that are considered commonplace today were revolutionary at the time, and Kenton was at the forefront of many of those changes."
"He's considered shy, but that word does not mean ‘withholding,'" says long time friend David Robb, now of Acoustic Dimensions. "He's not a braggart though he has done a lot of things – things he'd be the last person to tell you about. He's definitely right on the verge of being that egghead professor, but not quite there," he laughs. "He loves to share ideas. Over the years I've come to him many times with a thread of an idea, and together we'll come up with a solution. He is the ideal collaborator."
Bitten
Forsythe says he got bitten by the audio bug at the tender age of three: "My Mom likes to tell the story of me sitting on the floor and playing certain records over and over until it drove her nuts."
He was born in Boston in 1944 and grew up in the nearby town of Sharon. "I've always been interested in music," he says. He dabbled in piano, but science was a passion, and he spent many hours preparing for his school science fairs. As he became a teenager in the 1950s, he embraced the "hi-fi" era and got involved tinkering with home stereos.
He went to Yale to study physics … however: "that department had a reputation for being extraordinarily challenging and I was not up for it!" he laughs. He switched to studying American and Asian history, the latter of which would come in handy in ways he couldn't possibly imagine when he graduated in 1966. "When I visit China and the other Asian countries today, I know a bit about the places – sometimes more than the locals!"
His path to pro audio went off road when his skills in urban planning landed him a job with the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Next he earned a Masters' degree in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. However, during this time, he continued to be the "hi-fi" expert among his friends and was increasingly called on to build home sound systems. Forsythe's hobby got ratcheted up a notch when he came upon the classic How to Build Speaker Enclosures.
In June of 1970, he returned to Massachusetts, taking another job in traffic engineering, but also started building loudspeakers for local bands. "At the time, you could just walk into the library at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and use their resources. I would use their copy machine to get articles out of the AES Journal, and there I built up a library of papers and publications, which I still have today."
By 1974, his hobby finally became his day job, and he joined Delta Sound, a JBL distributor. "We built PA rigs and handled local touring work, but I could see pretty quickly it wasn't going far."
Meanwhile, years earlier, he had met one Lew Freedman when both were bidding on components at a stereo shop auction. They would set up a hi-fi retail operation that would be called K&L Sound in 1972. This evolved into having a pro audio component when "this young guy from Emerson College named Ken Berger joined us, and he was instrumental" to what would become Forsythe Audio.
"I was building a sound system in the early 1970s, and I had a desperate need for a good low-end cabinet," Dave Robb. "Everything around was made poorly, but then I saw this little ad in a trade magazine that said ‘we build a better bass box.'" It was one of the early Forsythe Audio ads, and as Robb lived in Woodstock at the time, he traveled down The Pike to Watertown. "I listened to his concepts and really liked the spin he put on it. Also, I could see how serious they were. I thought about it for a while and I ended up buying eight bass boxes without hearing them."
Eastern Acoustic Works
Berger, today an industry consultant, started his career working with Forsythe. "I will say he taught me more than anyone I've ever known," he says. When the two met and started working together, "the industry was making the transition from [the technology] being empirical to being scientific. There were lots of guys around doing good sound, but they had little formal training and education, and the equipment they were using wasn't measurable." Forsythe had a deep understanding of all aspects of sound: speech and music, and the importance of coverage for both.
In 1975, he and Freedman focused on Forsythe Audio Systems and starting selling his SR215 dual 15-inch vented bass horn design. "The SR215 had a small wedge-shaped wave-guide between the two drivers that improved path length differences between the two drivers in the extremes of the vertical plane near the crossover with the horn," explains FOH Editor Mark Frink. "The truly remarkable aspect of the cabinet was really its 30-inch deep form factor. This allowed it to be moved through most interior doors sideways on a two-wheel handcart. Also, his use of phase plugs came into play with his subsequent 12-inch horn-loaded mid-range devices, which used a foot-long phase-plug that covered the driver's dust-cap, improving response in the high-mids by eliminating destructive path-length differences."
The following year, Forsythe moved to a facility in Watertown, MA. "It was a fun time, because we were all audio nuts," he says of his early team. In 1977, he added two-way compact systems and a vented subwoofer system with an interchangeable tube venting system, allowing the enclosure to be able to be re-configured with various drivers from JBL Professional, Gauss Loudspeakers, Altec and Electro Voice.
In 1978, a new version of the company, Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW), debuted at the New York AES show. There the SR109 and the BH212 were introduced. One of their earliest customers was Bearsville Sound Studio, who bought up their bass bins and mid-horn cabinets. But in 1981, things would get even better. "Our first major break was when we got a call from Carlo Sound in Nashville, which was run by John Logan and Rich Carpenter," he says. "They were moving the Oak Ridge Boys around for 300 dates a year and getting tired of lugging these ‘portable junk yards' that was pro sound at the time. They wanted a single bin that did lows, mids and highs. We took what we were already doing and packaged it into a single bin, creating the CS103."
It was a major breakthrough, as it was essentially the first manufactured modular touring enclosure. Looking at doing more for the touring industry beyond their custom work, they next came up with the FR Series ("Full Range"), which lives on today as the FRz speakers.
Frank Loyko, a VP at TC Group Americas, was at EAW from the beginning. He says Forysthe has always been financially conservative with his money, especially when none of them had much of it during those early years. "He had a Volvo P1800 named Bruce when we were all very broke," he laughs. "It needed a clutch, but rather then spend money on getting one, he just drove without it. We'd all push him out of his company parking spot and he would somehow make it to Boston and back." But even when the company became successful, he had an aversion to spending money. Turning in expense reports to CFO after a business trip would induce a phone call. "The CFO would say, ‘Spend a little money – get yourself a nice hotel next time!'"
Loyko also tells another story of visiting his home in the mid-1980s during the holidays. "There was a Christmas tree in the middle of his living room, and it was rotating. He spent weeks making the tree go round and round for a Christmas party. Only Kenton would do that!"
Failure No Longer an Option
The 1980s were not kind to EAW and they struggled during a recession that saw interest rates at as high as 20 percent. Close calls ensued, but at the end of the 1980s, the economy picked up a bit and EAW became increasingly more successful due in large part the intervention of Ken Berger's father, Bernie Berger. "He was a successful businessman who had parlayed a job as an insurance agent into an insurance company," Forsythe explains. "EAW was, frankly, struggling, until he stepped in and provided a foundation for the company. If it wasn't for his management, guidance and expertise, EAW might not have survived."
"At one point in the mid 1980s, my father came in and put up his pension to guarantee a loan," Berger says. "Once he did that, failure was no longer an option!"
Arguably his biggest success came next when Sun Sound Audio behind songstress Suzanne Vega wanted something smaller than the KF550 that was arrayable, so Forsythe consolidated the system and repackaged it as the KF850. KISS went out with it next with great success, followed by Eric Clapton. The KF850 became the number one touring box in the world.
"Kenton's development of the KF850 made an affordable, powerful, well made, manufactured loudspeaker system available to hundreds of regional and international sound companies," Leamy says. "This single development changed the way business was done and how companies with the same inventory came together to share resources."
"People were moving away from building their own systems, and the KF850 was there for that," said Berger. "It was the most successful system in history of pro audio at that time."
Robb tells of a portable staging and sound system called the Carlos Moseley Music Pavilion. "It was a portable system used by the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera House for summer concerts in Central Park, and it was a very elaborate system." Forsythe designed the speaker system for it. "Instead of big left/right arrays at the stage, it was a completely distributed battery-powered wireless system, based on the KF300, with a rear-firing transducer to simulate early reflections. "There were 24 of these things, and they looked like Lunar Landers. They had marine cell batteries and electronics at the bottom, and a forklift picked them up and dropped them in an offset pattern of concentric rings. These things were totally wireless, because the park service would not allow cable to be run." The system was used by the city from 1990 to 2005.
The 1990s would be a period of growth for EAW, as they were called in to re-do the sound system for Angel Stadium of Anaheim, CA. It was a transformative time for sporting arenas as the needs evolved beyond just spoken word – powerful systems that could pump out music were needed – and EAW was there to supply the technology. "We customized cabinets to make it application-specific to a stadium and integrate the entire system," Forsythe says. "We had been trying to get into doing installs and were promoting our horn-loaded three-way systems as having an advantage in this market." From Fenway to Heinz, from the Cardinals to the White Sox, EAW's systems are found in more than 50 percent of all Major League Baseball stadiums.
Shortly after that, the MK Series was introduced. This is a flexible two-system system created to be a cost-effective install solution. Then, in 1999, the industry was offered the Avalon Series, which made EAW the first loudspeaker manufacturer to devote its resources to developing systems specifically for dance clubs.
Google That? Kenton That!
In 2000, EAW became part of the LOUD Technologies family, with Forsythe becoming VP Strategic Engineering EAW. There he helped launch EAW Commercial, a new line of commercial audio solutions from EAW and Mackie. He also oversaw the development of the KF760 and KF730 Series line arrays. Other highlights include Digital Steerable Array (DSA) Series, the AX Series and EAW Focusing, among many others. In recent years, KF740 and the QX range have been added.
Today, he says, "we have a great crew of engineers, and they wind up doing most of the work, while I tend to get involved in the design conceptions. We try to identify what the market needs and service that. These days, I just consider myself fortunate to have an amazing crew of people who can take on the work."
Forsythe has three kids: Jeremy, 29, an architect; Jonathan, 27, a financial analyst; and Kendra, 24, who works in the wine industry.
"It was a total surprise," Forsythe says of the Parnelli honor. "These days I just consider myself so fortunate to have an amazing crew of people to work with, and now I'm honored to receive the Parnelli."
"Kenton always had a special place in his heart for his employees," Loyko says. "That's always something I still admire in an industry that has seen so much consolidation. He still looks out for those who work with him."
"It is truly an honor to work with Kenton," Rocha adds. "He is phenomenally driven and will not settle for anything less than the best. On top of all that, Kenton is a wonderful person. Kenton's spirit makes this a special place to be."
"Kenton is the greatest guy in the world," says Berger. "I've known him since I was 18, and we worked side by side for the next 23 years. You could not always count on him being at the office first thing in the morning, but you could always count on him being there at 8pm or 10pm at night.
"Today when kids have a question, they Google it. Back then, we just asked Kenton!"
