Back in the Day is an interview series in which we talk with veteran audio professionals about their careers and perspective on how things have changed over the years.
This time around we talked with John Caldwell. Starting with a focus in car audio in 1979, he has been in the industry since his senior year of college. Caldwell moved to home automation in the early 90s. He is currently President of Arizona-based Grace Motif. Grace Motif specializes in custom integration products in the residential, commercial and hospitality markets.
You can find our last installment, an interview with Joel Rosenblatt, here.
You got into the industry in 1979, is that right?
It was my senior year of college. I was a marketing major and I was running the advertising at my college newspaper. One of my local accounts was a car stereo store. I began working on their marketing and advertising and later went to work for them after I graduated. I took my first trip to CES in 1979.
I ran a car stereo store for about a year and then I went to work for a company called Audio Mobile, which at the time was the penultimate expression of high end in car audio. I did all of their marketing until they were purchased in 1983. I was recruited to go to ADS—Analog Digital Systems—down in Boston in 84 and 85. I was there until 1992. There, I helped start their whole house audio division—custom audio. We actually applied a lot of the same principals, with multichannel amplifiers and processors, that were found in car audio. So my interest in the home side of things didn’t start until 1990 or 1991.
Many of the same problems we saw in custom installation existed in car audio…
How do you mean?
It had been typical that you would go into a car audio store and you would have a demonstration where you have 30-something radios, 64 amplifiers and 120 pairs of speakers. It was as if you were buying a car and having to pick out the seats from one vendor, the engine from another manufacturer and the transmission from another car company. It was crazy. We saw the same exact phenomenon happening in the whole house and custom audio business where the dealer was having to hodgepodge all kinds of things and there wasn’t a systematic approach. We took the approach we had in car audio and applied it to whole-house audio. We approached it from a marketing standpoint too. When you actually design a system from the ground up together—sources, speakers, wiring, control—you wind up with a lower cost, much more efficient system. There is less opportunity for something to go wrong.
That was an early time and early concept in looking at integrated systems. How have you seen things change since?
The hardware has obviously come a long way. Now I think the control systems and interfaces have become highly customized and rarified in their price points. They have become pretty accessible. They not only allow for you to control your audio system, but to control the heating, the security, and even the telephony in the home. What was a trend and very custom has become commoditized in the market. It’s mature now. There will always be a place for the custom dealer, who puts this all together and integrates it, especially now that everything runs over the network. I think the biggest change has been the migration of AV to IP — the integration to Internet Protocol for all the systems.
How has the experience for the end consumer changed when it comes to ease of installation and use?
There are always people who can take it a little further and integrate a little further. They can include lighting control, security, telephony… and all other systems. It is all doable by some consumers, but then a high school student can technically design your web page, but is that something you really want? Increasingly, we are doing so much more over these networks—our banking and our shopping. They need to be very secure. This is where the specialty dealer can deliver a high level of value – in securing that network and making sure the goods and services and the media that go over it are capable of getting where they need to go in a secure way. And 4K video is coming to you home and getting that going on these networks is going to be a challenge. There is still plenty of opportunity for dealer involvement. It won’t be easy and will require lots of training, but I see a lot of manufacturers paying a lot of attention to this. There is a lot of opportunity here, in integrating audio and video over the network.
You said earlier that you had attended CES in 1979. What was that like?
Back then it was really a pure audio show. We were in car audio. We were the first guys to exhibit car audio in the parking lot there and we were blowing people’s minds. The scope of the show was much more about audio. Now a lot of these shows combine industries. But it was smaller, it was more manageable. You could see the whole show in 2 or 3 days and take your time. You could really listen to things. Now there is so much to see and do. You still have fun but it’s not about the listening anymore. It’s really more about the business and hardware these days than it is about the listening. Back then our sources were analog tape and phonographs and records. Now we have a myriad of ways to acquire our source material. The shows were as much about the content as they were anything else. You’d go out there and buy records at the show. When was the last time anyone went to CES and bought records?
Music always has been my passion. In the 3rd grade, I went to children symphonies and it changed my life. I am very audio driven. I kept following my bliss. I followed it into car stereos, which is where you would listen to music as a kid. My student loan didn’t go toward my eduction but towards buying a great hi-fi system!
What keeps you excited about your work?
I’m really excited about the integration, and about where home cinema is going. It’s more than home theater. It’s CinemaScope, wide-screen, 3D, everything. And I am excited about great music also being in that space. We’re installing great home cinema systems. In short, cinema with great, great audio is what sort of excites me most these days.