Sound & Communications October 20, 2008 Issue

spec was intended to lock KT outof the bidding process. Needless tosay, Altec was not too happy aboutthis turn of events; however, in thelong run, they avoided being blamedfor a disastrous conclusion. From allappearances, Hannon Engineeringlooked like a shoo-in.Perhaps unbeknownst to Hannon,a new sound contracting firm had establishedits identity in the San FernandoValley. Former JBL employeesLarry Phillips (ex-national salesmanager), George Augsberger (exchiefengineer for JBL, not relatedto current president of Harman Pro,Blake Augsburger) and Walter Dick(ex-transducer engineer) had createda new company (the name of thefirm escapes me) that intended toparticipate in the Los Angeles soundcontracting field. Lo and behold,the new firm submitted a bid for theLong Beach natatorium project andwon the competitive bid process.Knowing full well that their feetGene turned to me andasked, ‘Is that Frank Sinatraor Peggy Lee?’ I honestlycouldn’t tell him.would be held to the fire and thatany deviation from the specs wouldbe pounced upon by Hannon, thePhillips/Augsberger/Dick consortiumproceeded to submit and dulyfabricate a system that was entirelywithin the stipulations of the specifications.Webster and EV were delighted;Altec was miffed to no end.With EV CDP horns pointedstraight down from a 75-foot overheadconcealed behind faux-tile grillecloth, the devices were beamed intoa highly reflective tile deck, an Olympic-sizedpool, with glass and marblewalls; the conditions predicated anacoustical and intelligibility nightmare.In those days, room equalizationwas virtually unknown and theequipment for accurately measuringacoustical response, likewise, wasstill a relatively poorly understoodscience. Measuring intelligibility wasalso an unknown art.In the capacity of what we wouldnow term a project manager, I canrecall accompanying Gene Lockard,foreman of the radio shop, whoseworkforce would be responsible foroperating the sound system at thenew natatorium, for an examinationof the new system. Gene was a goodtenor-sax man, having played withthe likes of the Sammy Kaye aggregation,the Jack Teagarden band andother well-respected jazz bands; hehad a good ear for music. When weentered the new facility, they wereplaying a recording; Gene turned tome and asked, “Is that Frank Sinatraor Peggy Lee?” I honestly couldn’ttell him—it was that bad.The Next Generation ofTwisted Pair Integration Level and peaking compensation on each inputensure consistent image quality with long andshort cable runs Dynamic skew equalization maintains RGB coloralignment regardless of input and output cablelength combinations Local video and audio I/Os accommodate rackmountedsources and destinations, eliminating theneed for additional transmitters and receivers Local bidirectional RS-232 insertion portsenable a 3rd-party control system to controlremote display devicesMTPX Plus Matrix SwitchersSix Models in sizes from 8x16 to 32x32800.633.9876 www.extron.com/mtpxplus34Twisted Pair Transmitters & Receivers Twisted Pair Switchers Twisted Pair Matrix Switchers Twisted Pair Distribution Amplifiersscm_hlfpg_ads_08.indd 109/15/08 1:03:59 PMOctober 2008 41