Mark Carlson

To the sound professional that seeks a greater challenge than flying a rig, try making a whole business take off. That was the path that Carlson Audio Systems co-founders Mark Carlson and Jonathan Stoverud-Myers picked in 1987, when they looked around their home base in Washington State and realized there was a niche they could fill. “We started our company with the idea of serving the 2,000-3,000 seat market on a very professional level,” Carlson says of his Seattle-based sound reinforcement venture.

“No one else was doing that – it was all really small clubs or much larger venues like arenas –we decided to focus on the mid-level.”

As the pair made the leap from freelance engineering to being responsible for an entire staff and inventory, their service-oriented angle coincided well with emerging market conditions. “The ‘80’s marked the first time you could buy a professional PA off the shelf,” says Stoverud-Myers. “Prior to that it was just Clair, Showco, MSI and the other big guys with secret boxes and components. Electro-Voice MT4’s and later the EAW KF850 helped to change what was acceptable.

“It’s more than just showing up with the gear, it’s also about finding out what people want, which often goes beyond what the band’s guy wants. So it’s more than providing boxes and cases, it’s the people that come behind that. Ours is a service industry, and anyone who doesn’t realize that is going to get left behind.”

McCauley line array, plus EAW 750 flown sidefills

Naturally, a central part of that equation is getting the most out of a system, which chief tech Allan Bagley accomplished when he tackled the crossover settings of the EAW KF750 system. “We looked at the curves built into the EAW crossover, then did the same thing with the BSS 366 processor and decided that one was more useable to us,” Bagley says. “We adjusted from there until we had something that sounded like it should.

“It was more about spending time with personal listening than using analysis gear. We assembled larger and larger systems – four or eight boxes a side – and saw the settings didn’t necessarily sound right with a larger system three or four times that size. We had a lot of people who were very happy with it in a short period of time, including people out touring with 750 rigs that didn’t sound as good as ours did!”

Bagley’s toy chest is ever-growing, and his favorite new tool comes from XTA. “Their new digital compressor works really well,” he says. “It has a lot of features that previously combined several items to accomplish, such as sidechain EQ in the compressor/limiter. With the type of work we’re doing, we’re watching other people use our system, and the software helps me to retain some control. It also sounds very good.”

He’s also having a good time getting audio signals into his laptop with USBPre 1.5 mic pres made by Sound Devices. “It’s a great way to bypass the cheap, crummy soundcard chips built into a laptop,” Bagley notes.

Jonathan Stoverud-Myers

Carlson’s man in the streets has a secret weapon, which he revealed after relentless interrogation. “I’ve had good luck with the Shure EFR11 EQ,” he says. “That’s a computer-controlled parametric EQ and feedback suppressor, the latter of which does not seem to be easily fooled by musical tones. I’ve found that to be a problem with some other feedback suppression devices.”