New York at the beginning of December is a sentimental place. Horse-drawn carriages trot fur-coated shoppers along 59th Street at Central Park South. Sesame Street’s Big Bird switches on the Christmas tree lights outside the Lincoln Centre. Tourists flock to Ground Zero. And AES delegates - at least the Americans - exhibit, buy, sell and discuss in detail ‘classic’ audio technology.
One whole section of this show was dedicated to ‘When Vinyl Ruled’, and offered tear-jerking insights into valve and lathe technology. Even away from this grotto, microphone and signal processor designs from the 1950s were on display, re-issued and repackaged with loving attention to detail.
Les Paul himself, who pioneered multitrack recording in the 1950s, figured in Gibson Laboratory’s activities, adding to the general air of reassuring heritage. Such was the mood of the exhibition, the city and, it seemed, the country as a whole, a few false white beards would not have been incongruous at the Jacob K Javits Convention Centre.
Progress continued, though. The biggest sound reinforcement technology announcement was Nexo’s GEO, a new generation holding three patents. On display were the S805 and S830, both full-range compacts for horizontal or line array; and a supercardioid subwoofer, CD12.
Introducing Nexo’s Hyperboloid Reflective Wavesource (HRW), GEO guides the wave using an acoustic mirror rather than the walls of the cabinet, creating a ‘virtual’ source behind the enclosure. Although the company claims that these GEO models are the smallest and lightest vertical array cabinets currently available (at 11kg and 25cmx40.6cmx21.9cm, they are about the same dimensions as the PS-8), line array is not the holy grail according to international sales director Mick Anderson. "We’re not just joining in a product fad that has got the industry very excited recently," he said. "We’re rolling out significant new technology, and it will both fill gaps in the market and provide benefits for existing applications."
Nexo recently went part-public while retaining majority control, and Anderson reflected on the changes. "You can only float once you’ve achieved a certain level of continuous business and profitability - and Nexo is a cash-rich company," he said. "We’ve done it to expand. If you have further plans - like opening offices in different countries, new technology - it gets very expensive, so it makes sense to take advantage of your own success.
"You realise your assets at the appropriate time, and we’d reached that time. We’re still in control of the company - we only liberated 15% of it for valuation, of which only 5% is actually public."
The company also announced new marketing plans for the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe, in the shape of a new deal with Francis Williams’s World Marketing Associates. Williams put his new - post-EAW - line-up into context.
"If you look at the brands we have, none of them competes directly," he said. "It’s true there are one or two crossover areas - Peavey and Nexo both make speakers - but no one can say they’re competing brands. We have a de facto NDA with everyone, anyway. Also the further away you go from the UK/US axis, the less sensitive an issue it is. Even in Western Europe, you get big agencies or distributors handling more than one name in each product sector. Liaising with people like that is what we specialise in - taking a lot of brands from zero to something, in difficult territories."
According to Williams, it was at his behest that the relationship between WMA and EAW came to an end, and not an edict from the centralising forces at Mackie - although the departure of EAW from the HW International stable had been a factor. "The opportunity with Nexo was coincidental," he said.
Nexo US’s executive VP of sales Jim Sides, meanwhile, was celebrating in a wider con
