Mike Frost: Do you see DSP eventually replacing analog active and passive crossovers entirely?

Ken: I think it would be interesting to run a survey on PSW to see if people are still using analog crossovers in their house systems today.

Jim G: I agree with the idea of less for the tech to mess up, and now we have DSPs with many more things to mess up, in the wrong hands. What can manufacturers do about that?

Ken: This is one of the hardest things we dealt with at EAW. Coming from a perspective (as you should) that the customer is always right, how do you tell/prevent a customer from doing things that harm the performance of the system?

Ken (continued) I don't think there is a perfect solution, because if you prevent user access to the processor settings, you offend a lot of people, and for those who actually have the experience and equipment to make effective use of those settings, you have eliminated their access along with the people who only get themselves in trouble by twiddling those knobs (or, if you prefer, those virtual controls on screen).

Ken (continued): What we came up with, as I was leaving EAW, was to have a multi-tiered access system to software control to try and keep people from getting into things beyond what they were capable of. It also basically showed you what adjustments were appropriate and which ones you could really get yourself in trouble with.

Ken (continued): Ideally you can also, in the software, quickly A/B between any adjustments you made and the factory default settings. I don't know if EAW ever brought any of this kind of stuff to market but we were working on it when I left.

Jim G: I would think training and certification to attend before even being aloud to purchase the gear. Some have done that. What are your thoughts?

Ken: It's a great idea. But you always have the conflict between wanting to sell and wanting to control who is using your stuff. Again, I don't think there is any perfect solution. Training required or otherwise is always good.

Ken (continued): What you want, and what is most difficult when you get bigger, is to create a real community between the users and the support/development team. When we were small at EAW, that was easy. Kenton was in direct contact with most if not all the users. The feedback from users was constantly improving both our ability to teach other users and develop improvements.

Ken (continued): As the company got bigger, and the engineering staff grew, we got much more capabilities in terms of design, but it became increasingly hard to have the design team in direct contact with the user community. This all gets back to the trade off between large and small companies.