The Sound Room

Aperionaudio.com Updates

by John Wanderscheid

Over the past few months, we have been in the process of rolling out several new and updated products. At the HE Expo in April we introduced two really exciting new products. Our new 632 bookshelf speakers and 633 towers were unveiled to the press and consumers in NY to rave reviews. In fact the 633 towers have been so popular; they have been completely sold out since they were released. In addition to these new products, we announced the transition to our new patent-pending HD-X 3 crossover technology for our existing 5-series products. Behind the scenes we have been working to integrate and transition all of these new products to our website.

I am happy to announce that the new products are now available for sale on the site and the have been integrated into our systems at a glance and drag and drop system builder tools. The systems at a glance now include our most popular systems configured for easy purchase or customization. More importantly, the drag and drop system builder includes all our speakers so you can build your dream system.

Many customers ask…what’s the difference between the 522’s and the 532’s? The only difference between these two products is the crossover network. The 522’s feature DiAural crossovers and have been the heart of our product line for several years. This speaker won numerous Editor’s Choice awards and there are thousands of customers who are in love with this product. As a result, the 532’s are very similar to the 522’s. The phrase “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” applies here. The improvements are subtle. The main improvement is the 532’s offer the same open sound with a very flat frequency response. The new HD-X 3 crossover makes them a bit easier to drive and they are unaffected by resistance from long runs of speaker wire. HD-X 3 crossover technology is an evolution from the DiAural crossover because it maintains the best aspects (flat impedance) and improves on some of its shortcomings (flexibility beyond 2-way designs & appetite for power). The result is an incredible speaker that can be used with less expensive electronics and speaker wire.

Visit our website for complete info on these new products and feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Oh, and stay tuned because there are more exciting product announcements on the way in the next few weeks.

Why Aperion?

by Win Jeanfreau

If you want to make a small fortune in the audio business, it helps to start with a large one. That process is expedited by choosing to sell something in an unconventional way, like speakers sold directly to your customers, via the internet. To really speed things along, name your company something difficult to remember, difficult to pronounce, and impossible to spell, like Aperion. If I had a nickel for every time I was asked to pronounce and spell my company's name, we’d be bigger than Bose™ by now!

So why would someone who graduated from college with above average grades, who has run several successful companies, and has a modicum of common sense, decide to start a home entertainment speaker company on-line, and give it a name like Aperion? The answer to the first question is simple: the business model works… and works well!

No middleman means no middleman mark-up. That means we can pour more money into our speakers and provide our customers with a really amazing value proposition. It also means that we have a relationship with the people who use our products. Through that relationship, we get firsthand feedback on what’s working, what’s not, and what we should be doing about it. That valuable relationship is all too rare these days.

Why name the company Aperion? Well… that’s a different story.

How Do You Want To Shop?

by Lorraine Janeway

Home theater tends to be the territory of men.  To the point that 98% of home theater purchasers are male.  And so, as a female in a predominantly male industry, I find myself wondering why, and what the barriers are to women being interested in home theater speakers.

Certainly, women have a huge impact on purchases, with women making 95% of the purchasing decisions generally.  When shopping for consumer electronics however, 41% of women feel confused/stupid, with 39% having a sense of sensory overload, according to research on www.eBrain.com  Ouch!  Who would want to shop when the experience leaves them feeling overloaded, confused and stupid.

Women’s main complaints about Consumer Electronics shopping is unhelpful (74%),and pushy (70%) salespeople.  Both women and men have had that “used-car lot” shopping experience, and it definitely leaves a person with a sour taste.

But, the research I’ve found points to the problems and not to the solution.  Except for one book, Don’t Think Pink, by Lisa Johnson and Andrea Learned.  They state, from their research that “women would rather do front-end research and then go straight to the one product that meets their needs, than try five different products over the course of a few months”.

Voila!  We have the Internet for research, and then the whole concept of buying speakers on-line.  Read the editorial reviews…read the customer raves…dig in to the Home Theater Crash Course…and then have the experience of total customer delight because of the way you’re treated.  This is what Aperion’s vision was.  Our website is the promise and the beginning of an incredibly satisfying relationship with our customers

And you don’t have to be a woman to appreciate it.

47 Hours and Counting...

by Ben Fowler

The recording session now complete, I had figured that the most challenging aspect of this whole project was now finished. The grueling two days of recording, which racked up a total of 17 hours of studio time, was done. In my naivety, I considered the most important part of the project, the recording of the music, to also be the hardest. Over the course of the next three weeks, and thirty three total hours of studio time later, I realized that I was way wrong. With an album release there’s this thing called Mixing. But before that there’s this thing called Editing. And both of those things combined equal a really long time.

Editing is the part where when the band messes up somewhere, you fix it by cutting and taping the digital tracks so that the error is just no longer there. It’s magic, I swear. Editing with Digital Performer works exactly like a word processing program except instead of letters you’re dealing with sine waves of sound. Usually there’s a little “clip” noise right were the edit was made, but all you do to fix that is add a little crossfade (if you use itunes you know what I’m talking about – where one tunes fades slowly into the other), and set the slope (how quickly the fade needs to happen). Editing can happen because typically you have multiple takes of a song. So you can cut or copy one section of one take and paste it over another take. Being rather picky about everything means that editing is complicated and takes lots of time. The downside to this is that every time you think you edited all the mistakes out, you listen through and find yet another error that needs correction. So the more you become familiar with the song clearly the more mistakes that inevitably show up.

Once the editing is completed, you get to move onto the mixing part. This is actually really fun. First you typically isolate your individual tracks, one at a time, and EQ them properly. Similar to a speaker system, you want to limit the frequency range of each instrument (speaker) to it’s primary frequency range, so it doesn’t get in the way of the other instruments. For instance, you want to roll off the saxophone’s lowest frequencies (believe it or not there’s frequencies all the way down in the 8 Hz region) so they don’t get in the way of the bass. This increases the level of separation and clarity between all the instruments.

Next, you add your effects. Reverb and compression are used almost all the time. Reverb adds a certain room sound so the instrument sounds more natural. You usually pick a reverb that sounds good on the solo instrument or the drums, and use that same reverb on all the other instruments. This helps to unify the sound and make it sound like everyone’s in the same room. The reverb can be manipulated in terms of level, attack, decay, amplitude, etc, so off the shelf you might find a reverb that sounds just okay, but with proper manipulation you can make it sound great for your specific song or instrument.

Compression is the crazy thing that a lot of people don’t understand fully, including myself. But at its core, it compresses the sound so that the loud parts aren’t as loud and the soft parts aren’t as soft. This might sound unimportant, but it really can help to make the sound a lot easier on the ears. Not to mention that by squashing the sound a bit, you actually warm up it’s tone. During the mastering process (more on that later) compression can be used on the whole band, which has a huge role in making the CD sound like a CD and not a demo tape. The instruments will have better separation, and muddy or loud passages will become unveiled, unmasking things that were maybe covered up before by a loud cymbal crash.

Lastly, you set your levels. We spent about 4 or 5 hours working on this. I think we have a good mix, but now I’m going back and forth and back and forth on making sure the solo levels are loud enough but not too loud and making sure the drums are not too loud but loud enough. This is where big decisions are made in terms of the sound of the record, and since this is the first for me, I am completely out to lunch on what to do. Please help. Give a listen to the tracks in my previous blog post and let me know what you think.

Help Along the Way

by Win Jeanfreau

I’ve recently decided to purchase a dirt bike. On the face of it, that would seem like a rather simple decision. However, I haven’t owned one since college and things have changed a bit since then. Two stroke or four? 250, 450 or 650cc’s? Electric start or kick? New or used? Honda or another brand?

Like most, I dug into the net for information, visited a few dealerships, and talked to some of my friends who know something about the subject. I zeroed in on a used Suzuki DR Z400. Once I felt I was smart enough not to be totally taken advantage of, I selected some promising candidates, and started calling the owners for the data download: What condition is the bike in? How has it been ridden? Does it have the optional street light accessory? How many miles? Why are you selling it? The basics.

I was careful to only ask questions that wouldn’t expose my limited knowledge about the bike. After only a few calls I became convinced that there were other questions I should be asking; however, I didn’t want to put myself at a negotiating disadvantage by revealing my ignorance. Then I called Steve, the owner of a bike for sale in California. Steve turned out to be the mother lode of DR Z info.

Steve is passionate about riding and has owned a variety of bikes in the class I was exploring. In addition, he loved to share what he knew about the subject, even if it meant that he might talk me into looking at a different bike. Steve pointed me to a site, www.4strokes.com that has all kinds of information about four stroke dirt bikes and what I’d need to do to tweak any weaknesses out of the Suzuki. Steve pointed out that the bike comes from the factory with soft brakes and suspension, and the fuel injection jets need work to make them more robust. The list went on. In the end, it was obvious to both of us that Steve’s bike wasn’t the one for me. However, his generosity with the information he had accumulated helped me identify the bike I will ultimately purchase.

I relate the experience because it’s what we aspire to provide, to be the “Steve” for those we come in contact with at Aperion. Whether you buy what we have to offer or not, we strive to send you on your journey informed, and better prepared to choose the speaker that best fits your needs. Thank you for giving us a chance to help.

It’s the Everyday that Helps Life Feel Rich

by Lorraine Janeway

It’s been a busy week, packed in between a funeral and a wedding.  Beginnings and endings are noted by major events, but it’s the everyday that helps life feel rich and full.  At Aperion, we’ve just finished two major projects, and we celebrated with the best donuts in the Portland Metro area. It was great to meet with our team members and talk about the success.  The project manager, Marcie, commented on how well everyone has stayed on schedule and done their part in getting things in as promised.  Seems like we all wanted to linger in the room and just enjoy the camaraderie that always exists when people pull together toward a common goal.

So, last week I’d promised to introduce more of our Aperion crew.  And I realized I’d launched into my blog without introducing myself.  I’ve been with Aperion for over two years.  Win Jeanfreau, Aperion’s CEO, had been doing some business consulting and had invited me to work with Aperion to help promote a cohesive culture and help clarify Aperion’s direction.  My background is diverse…I ran a small retail operation in Austria, was a regional manager for a cosmetic company, built a large property management company, then sold it and got a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Counseling.

So, I planned on taking a year sabbatical from my practice, enjoying Aperion and then returning to my other life.  But I’m still here and thrilled to be, because of the kind of company we’re building.  Aperion is young and energetic, willing to learn, and intensely committed to customer needs.  The culture is built around a synergistic core of believing that we are all more through our association with each other than we would be without each other.  Gratefully, we consistently attract people who are self-directed and willing to be accountable to the team.

Sage, our bookkeeper, is a steward of our financial well-being.  She’s thorough, committed to perfection, and is willing to do more than her job description originally contained.  Sage used to answer phones too, but as we got busier, we also got Kim.  Kim, who sits at our front desk, is the “first voice” of Aperion.  She answers a zillion phone calls pleasantly, is committed to meeting caller’s needs, and when she’s not busy, lets other team members know that she is available to help.  And then, there’s Kelli.  Kelli is in charge of our warehouse and in charge of shouting out seemingly irrelevant phrases (Like “Chicken in a Biscuit!” or “Reconstitued Bean Dip!) ) when we all need stress relief.  She’s rabidly focused on customer fulfillment and is a huge part of why customers love Aperion.   

So, it’s a blast at Aperion.  I’m still here, and still falling in love fresh with how core purpose and values manifest in our relationships with each other, our vendors and our customers.

Designed in the USA, Made in China

by John Wanderscheid

Some of the most interesting conversations I have with my 9 year old son occur when I am putting him to bed at night. A few nights ago, we were talking about speakers and he asked where Aperion builds its speakers? Good question, in fact many customers ask the same question. The short answer is they are made in China.

The reason we sell speakers for less has a lot more to do with our direct to consumer business model than manufacturing in China. In reality, most of our competitors build some, or all of their products in China or other parts of Asia. Today, China is to speakers what Switzerland once was to watches. Most of the top quality speaker manufacturing expertise is centered in one area in the Dong Guan province. So, keeping manufacturing costs low is really a requirement to be competitive.

Back in 1999, it was our intention to build our speakers close to home, but after many months of research we couldn’t find the domestic skill set we needed. So, we cast the net a bit wider and set up a contract manufacturing relationship in Mexico. After several months in Mexico, we quickly learned the high quality European drivers and other components we were buying were being manufactured in China, sent to Europe then to Mexico for final assembly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize we could make the process much more efficient by manufacturing closer to the source.

Following a few trips to China and countless meetings with vendors, we struck a partnership with one of the largest speaker driver manufacturers in the world. Over the years we have both learned many lessons and our partnership has grown. We design and engineer our own products because we really care about product design and sound quality not to mention we have one of the most talented speaker designers working for us. Our engineer, Ken Humphreys was an original founder of Speakercraft and has done driver design for some of the largest speaker companies in the world. He has created many award-winning products and really enjoys the challenge of creating speakers that sound great but don’t cost an arm and a leg.

For many, the phrase “Made in China” comes with many preconceived ideas. I don’t know about other manufacturing operations, but our workers are highly skilled, well paid craftsmen who work in an incredibly modern factory. The quality that can be achieved in China is really quite amazing.

For Aperion, “Made in China” means we manufacture an amazing line of speakers and sell them direct at a substantially lower price than a retail store. And we are able to provide good jobs for our team as well as our manufacturing partner. It really is a win-win situation for everyone.

The Finer Aspects of the Recording Session

by Ben Fowler

The recording session highlights:

400 square feet
2 sound isolation rooms
5 guys
16 channels
1 big ass Hammond b-3 organ
1 Trader Joe’s sesame-honey roasted cashews
3 Trader Joe’s sushi
5 Trader Joe’s turkey and ham sandwiches
1 pair of amazing Aiwa speakers

We met on Saturday morning at Dave’s Attic Productions. This is the basement of Dave’s house, which is all dedicated to recording and mixing music. He uses Digital Performer 3 by Motu , which is the less expensive version of Pro Tools, but works just as well and in some cases is better, according to Dave. Dave records in the full digital domain. This allows for an amazing amount of control later, during the editing and mixing process, and is much faster. The problem with digital to me is that there’s so many things you can tweek and fix, that you end up spending about the same amount of time with the digital method as you would with the analog (tape) method. The end-result though is hopefully a better, more polished album.

We had spent 3 or 4 hours dialing in the saxophone a few days earlier, so the first part of the morning was dedicated to the drums. The drums are the recording engineers’ highest priority and the most difficult to record accurately . This is due in large part to:

1. There are many drums in a drum set, all of which need at least one, and as much as two, dedicated microphones.
2. The drums are loud. But then they are soft. A huge dynamic range means the microphone technique is critical. A mix of close mikes and overhead, or ambient mikes are used. You also have to be sure your recording levels have plenty of room so there’s no possibility of clipping.
3. Drummers and their drum kits – A consistent touch, squeaky pedals, drum-tuning, torn heads – all have a greater effect than the room and mikes themselves.

After that we got the bass, guitar and Leslie miked. Those all went seamlessly. Two mikes were used on each instrument to allow us to have greater blending and balancing control in the mixing process - A mike on the front and back of the guitar amp; a mike on the top and bottom of the Leslie; a direct pickup and external mike on the upright bass.

Now on to the finer aspects of the recording session. As you can see from the highlights list above, a large part of the sustenance was from Trader Joe’s. It was important the band had plenty of snacks and food available to sustain themselves throughout the long day. Trader Joe’s allowed me to provide a fair amount of good quality items on my modest, indie budget. The most popular item was the honey-roasted sesame cashews. These provided a high boost of energy when the band needed it most. I would highly recommend this product to any band or producer getting ready for the studio. Nuts as you know provide a high level of protein, and are naturally low carb, so that band can stay focused, feel satiated, and remain sluggish-free.

We had two days to record 10 songs. For pop music that’s impossible. For jazz it’s standard stuff, but still challenging. I had to keep everyone on task and we actually had a lot of arranging to do in the studio, which takes tons of time. When I do it again, we’ll be more rehearsed for certain. But I think it’s to be expected, and even beneficial, to do some last minute arranging in the studio. Miles Davis, as you may know, counted on that spontaneous energy vibe when he went into the studio to record Kind of Blue, which as everyone knows is the most popular jazz record ever sold ( ). The thing that I remember as being the most challenging, looking back on the session, was getting all 5 guys clicking together, on the same take. What adds a level of complication for jazz, I think, is is the solos, because with the jazz record it’s all about improvisation. So besides having the band sounding tight, each soloist has to be ready to say something passionately. My songs have two or more soloists on most tracks. We ended up keeping takes if everyone sounded good except me or Dave, because we knew that we were both going to be around for the editing sessions to follow.

All the songs ended up coming out great (check out samples of "The Pilgrimage" and "So Long, So Far.") I’m very excited about the editing and mixing process. Because of my work here at Aperion, I’m listening to audiophile reference material all the time, so I tend to have picky taste in fidelity. It’ll be interesting to see how close to the reference stuff I can get on the indie-budget.

[Oh, the Aiwa speakers. Those were our secondary reference speakers. We had a primary pair of Event 20/20 powered monitors that are pretty standard fare for the recording studios. Dave was given the Aiwa speakers by a friend who was getting rid of an old boombox or something. They are his reference to ensure that a song still sounds good, even when played on speakers that cost 10 cents each to make (okay, maybe 13 cents). Luckily Aiwa isn’t specifically in the speaker business. If they were I’m sure they would make a great sounding speaker. I’ve been talking to Dave about getting some Aperion 632-LR bookshelf speakers in their to represent the other side of the speaker-quality spectrum.]

...Stick to the Safer, Non-emotional Variety

by Ben Fowler

My wife is a blogger. She often talks about how many hits her blog post received on any particular day. A certain amount of pride fills her voice when she tells me her blog entry was the “featured-blog-of-the day” at her blog site (It’s a blog community like java.blogs. Hers is a personal blog…a place in which she can escape her own identity and write uninhibitedly about things going on in her life. It’s not uncommon to hear in her blogs about our relationship, her career path, recent outings with the in-laws, and other potentially uncomfortable topics. Well I’m hear to say that you won’t be hearing about any of those topics here. I’m going to stick to the safer, non-emotional variety. I hope to talk about music quite a bit. I’m a saxophone player. And I’m currently producing my own record (my first…finally). So I’ll probably be talking a lot about that. Not necessarily to promote the album, but to maybe shed some light on the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into making a jazz record. Of course if you buy the record I won’t at all be offended.

So the first step in recording an album is making the music. In my case I chose to write my own material. Although there is one cover of B Hebb’s Sunny. I heard this great guitar player named Pat Martino play this on a live album and fell in love with it. You can find that recording here. After I paid the $125 mechanical rights fee to play my own version of Sunny on my record, I discovered that it’s been covered by more artists than any other song. So much for being original. [As a side note, The Harry Fox Agency brokers all of the transactions regarding mechanical licensing, i.e. using someone else’s song on your record. The statutory royalty rate is 8.5 cents per copy up to 2500 copies, but that’s only if your version is 5 minutes or less. Anything over that is a flat 1.65 cents per minute.

I have spent the last two years writing the 9 original songs that will be on the record. The whole song-writing thing is really kind of funny. Most of the ideas you get writing a song come from combining ideas from other songs you’ve recently heard, or that inspire you. So any original song is really a unique combination of two or more songs you’ve heard somewhere else before. For example, one of my songs, called Awakening, is inspired by a counter-melody in J. S. Bach’s Sleepers Awake! I called that my melody and put it over a different time signature, sped up the tempo, and added some jazz drums. The new tempo with the drums and melody alone reminds me a lot of stuff I’ve heard from Pat Metheny and Michael Brecker. Add a solo section and a tag and you have a song.

Coming up… the July 9 & 10, 2005 recording session…

The Joy of Suspending Your Disbelief

by Win Jeanfreau

As a result of running a company that makes home entertainment speakers, I’ve become a serious movie buff. I view a wide variety of new release movies in the theater as part of my “research,” looking for the next best sound effects to show case my products. As a result of my movie attendance, I have become painfully aware of how hard it is in the theater environment to immerse myself in the flick and allow the magic of suspending my disbelief to occur. The mobile phones going off (despite 3 clear reminders to turn the damn things off), the running commentary from the group in front, beside, or behind me, and the incessant kicking of the back of my seat. It all adds up to major distractions and has me evaluating the movies at a level of conscious critique they were never created to endure.

The same movie, viewed at home, is more compelling, moving and enjoyable because of my ability to actively control my environment. The critical phrase that makes the difference is to “actively controlling my environment”. This means taking the phone off the hook, preparing the eatable goodies in advance, a pre-movie visit to the WC, and an agreement with those watching with you to “Watch”. No multi-tasking by surfing on the PC, preparing meals, paying bills… the list is endless. When you are able to create a distraction free cocoon within which to live in the world of pirates, hobbits, dinosaurs, or the matrix, you give yourself that rare privilege of escape. For two short hours, you can become a superhero, a pilot, an international spy, you name it.

When done properly, I emerge from the experience having returned to the consciousness of my childhood, where the division between imagination and reality was often too blurry to distinguish clearly; a place where creativity is sparked and fed, where possibility is rediscovered, and where the monsters of our daily lives are reduced to their proper size.

Now I’m not claiming that Hollywood is producing the elixir joy for the masses. Nor do I believe that most the movies they produce allow the process to occur, or are even worth the effort to watch. However, when the “right” movie is matched to the “right” viewing environment, what magic there may be, can happen. And when it does, it’s worth the effort.