The Jim Long Interview
By Keith Clark

Q. Jim, you walked in the door at EV in 1963, and here we are now, almost 40 years later. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen?

I’m not much of a philosopher. I don’t think the basic way we do business has changed. You need to identify problems that need to be solved and provide solutions, and in the process, build very close relationships with the people who make decisions.

Jim and a friend at a trade show party, early ‘80s.

Some of the technology has changed, but mostly in the electronics area. The basics of transducers, design wise, were established long before I was born, which was 1941. Sorry, that’s not a very snappy answer, but I believe the core of what we do has remained essentially the same.

Q. Do you believe customers to be any more sophisticated about sound these days?

I don’t know about that. The Yankee Stadium project happened to go to a Bogen dealer, which was a commercial sound company not into this newer world of equalized sound, but at the same time Altec and JBL contractors certainly were. This same type of situation still exists, not so much with commercial sound entities doing projects outside of their scope and expertise, but with MI/retail operations trying to do installations.

So the details are different, but I still think you have the same problems of naiveté. Part of the generational hazard is that you die and new guys come into business. They may not know what they’re doing, may not have been mentored properly and either don’t discover the proper way at all or discover it on their own or via mentors such as colleagues, manufacturers and the like.

I’m amazed, at almost 60 years of age, that I can still do a Lou Burroughs-style mic presentation to a bunch of contractors, and two-thirds of them have never understood the basics. And they look at me afterward, give me a big hug, saying “thank you, you’ve explained so many things that I’ve never figured out and never had time to.” A mic’s just a little thing to a lot of these folks, an “accessory” to the big picture, and they never bother to learn that it’s the first key to what they’re trying to attain in terms of sonics and performance.

Q. What are the most significant products and technologies from EV?

Well, let’s start with Lou Burroughs’ Variable-D microphone technology, where if you get too close to the mic you don’t have the usual “muddying” bass boost. This is pretty cool for entertainment and broadcast applications, and there was a time when mics like the RE15 and their less expensive brethren were really the podium mics of choice, for the same reason.

It’s an interesting comment on the industry that EV is no longer in that premier position, even though they still make at least one of these mic models. Now you see little condenser mics on podiums, and you get right up on them and they sound “bassy,” with plenty of P-pops. People now just put up with this, and I don’t understand it. It’s like they know longer know how to do it correctly. And at the same time, mics like the RE20 and RE27N/D are still very popular for broadcast announce and production.

Product development is an interesting game, in that you can develop a product for a focused application and that’s indeed where it’s used. An example would be the constant directivity high-frequency horns, which marry several little principles to work extremely well within sound reinforcement systems.

On the other hand, I remember the first order of RE20’s. We had to get 20 of them out to Glen Glenn Sound in Hollywood by a certain day in 1968. Even engraved their name on the mic bodies – it was a big deal. Film sound and production was the expressed primary application of this mic, so it makes sense that Glen Glenn was the first major customer.

But now what’s an RE20 used for? Kick drum, voiceover and radio broadcast. It’s an indication that as hard as Lou tried, doing the homework and building the relationships, the product took on a life of its own.

They also liked to run over mics. This one still worked, most assuredly.

Another nifty product was the 100S compact portable loudspeaker in a plastic box. They were light weight, had a nice, clean sound with good projection, and you could run over them with a pickup truck without damage. We even had an ad with a truck on top of the speaker. Manifold Technology was a milestone; the idea of combining two to four drivers on one horn with minimum degradation of sound, is pretty neat. It got EV into the concert sound business.

Then we went to X-Array and Ring Mode Decoupling (RMD), a collection of many, many ways at looking at the resonances of speakers, mechanics, acoustics.

I didn’t consider RMD a milestone at all until I heard the results, which are impressive. The success came directly from the passion and devotion of the people working on it, trying to create meaningful technology and a product that’s good for industry.

Q. Why have you hung around so long in the audio business?

I love audio. I’ve never found another industry where the main reason to be in the business – and this can get you in trouble sometimes – is not about making money. We’re not “suits”. We love music, we love reproduction of sound, we love recording. I’m not a performer, but I love listening to high-fidelity reproduction of sound, whether it be in my home or in a sound reinforcement system. It’s my life.

Almost anyone in this industry is in it for this reason first. They learn how to be business people second, which is maybe the wrong way to do it, but I think our industry is such that you’ve got to have that passionate connection to the musical part of it, or you’re going to go do something else.

I have never wanted to do anything else. Even when I’m ticked off, it never occurs to me to change industries, or companies for that matter.

Q. What do you see happening, technology-wise, over the next 5-10 years?

My real talent is that with a great deal of enthusiasm, I present concepts to our industry, whether it be acoustics, product and application, technology, how to, or what have you. Now this is not the kind of thing that wins Nobel Prizes, but hopefully, if I do my job with enough clarity, interest and humor, people say ‘I understand.”

So, in that context, I don’t sit around and think “gee, what’s really going to happen in the future.” I’m just not that kind of person. I could say something really trite to answer the question, but that would be about the extent of it.

Q. Let’s take another approach: Are you optimistic about the future of the industry?

Yes. Even though the audio industry is just a fly on the back of the economy, we’re getting to take advantage of what’s happening in the computer industry. At least they let us use their stuff. (laughs)

So there will be convergence - which is just a buzz word – that will continue to happen in a technology sense. We’ll see more and more totally integrated systems that are linked digitally, manipulated digitally, but we’ll have just as much trouble making it work right as anything now.

There will always be a need for people who do good sound, and some folks will chose to do just sound and they’ll do just fine in a business sense. For every big church with a larger production facility than you could have ever imagined 15 years ago, in terms of audio, video, recording, production, duplication, there’s still 100 churches that primarily need just a good PA system. And there will always be a desire for good sound, and a general lack of understanding in attaining it. So not everybody will just be able to install a sound system with any sort of good or even mediocre results.

Page 1 I Previous (2) I Next