Image: www.aviom.com
Forbes Magazine offered interesting statistics in a May 2018 report, “10 Shocking Workplace Stats You Need to Know,” by David Sturt and Todd Nordstrom. Fifty-three percent of Americans in the workforce are unhappy at their jobs.
This 53% does not include Aviom Co-Founder, President and CEO Carl Bader. As the chief product guy at Aviom, Bader reports, “I love my job.”
With some 2,000 gigs now under his belt, Bader began his career playing music full-time as a singing drummer, working his way through an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. Blending a passion for product design with that of music performance he started Aviom with several audio-geek colleagues.
Carl Bader, Co-Founder, President and CEO, Aviom
The end result is personal mixing systems that are an AV consultant’s and specifier’s dream when working on live performance spaces, including today’s music-heavy, oftentimes hard-rocking churches—spaces that are not acoustically designed for loud contemporary music.
Church.Design spent time talking with Bader from his West Chester, Pa., office and studio, learning more about Aviom’s approach to product development.
Church.Design: What would you say is Aviom’s philosophy on product development, and what new products are you bringing to market in 2019?
Bader: Aviom philosophy and products have always been about making performers more comfortable and helping them deliver their best performances. Our personal mixing systems are designed to do just that. We plan to continue making personal mixers and, this year, we are adding a brand-new tactile transducer line to our product offerings called the BOOM System. I personally haven’t been this excited about a new product release since we first shipped personal mixers in 2002.
Church.Design: What makes Aviom products, including the new BOOM Tactile Transducer System, especially right for the church market?
Bader: Helping churches control their sanctuary volume and giving performers tools to perform their best have always been our mission at Aviom. Our monitor mixers and our new BOOM System address these goals directly. Adding personal mixers with in-ear-monitors (IEMs) has helped churches remove the wedge monitors from the platform, lowering both stage and sanctuary volume while providing performers an easy to achieve, high quality mix for their IEMs.
“IEMs still sound great, but that feel and energy is missing. The BOOM System adds back that feel the performer was used to when they had their amps and wedges on stage, and the difference is profound.”
Now, with churches adopting the “silent stage” approach, Aviom felt we needed to step up our game, hence the new BOOM Tactile Transducer System. IEMs sound great, but they don’t feel great, especially if the drummer uses eDrums and the bass and guitar players are asked to use simulators and lose their stage amps in a quest for a silent stage.
Aviom BOOM System Family
Your IEMs still sound great, but that feel and energy is missing. The BOOM System adds back that feel the performer was used to when they had their amps and wedges on stage, and the difference is profound. It’s so much more fun and effortless to play. With the BOOM System, most performers will naturally be using their IEMs at a lower volume, even though the energy of their monitoring system will feel greater. They will be less fatigued at the end of the set, and their long-term hearing health should be much improved.
“With the BOOM System, most performers will naturally be using their IEMs at a lower volume, even though the energy of their monitoring system will feel greater."
[The BOOM System] really must be experienced to be believed. The magic behind the BOOM System is that it is not a shaker effect, but a musical extension of your IEMs. It adds the low frequency musical content that is missing, that low-end content that IEMs just can’t produce because of basic physical principles.
“... it adds the low frequency musical content that is missing, that low-end content that IEMs just can’t produce because of basic physical principles.”
Church.Design: What technology will be impacting the church world in 2019 (Dante’s technology, for instance), and how will these new technologies impact Aviom's product offerings?
Bader: Going forward, we want to be able to interface our systems with any network that is interoperable between manufacturers, so anyone can enjoy the performance of our world-class mixers. Currently, we support the Dante protocol and plan to support other protocols when they reach critical mass, so we may be adding additional interfaces in the future.
Near-term, we’re concentrating on the BOOM System rollout and plan to continue to use our A-Net technology to interconnect our mixing systems, as it is optimized specifically for this application.
Church.Design: What about Aviom’s support? What can a church designer or church tech expect if they place a call with questions or problems?
Bader: Regarding customer service, we always strive to have a great relationship with our users. We realize using IEMs and getting a personal mixing system set up and optimized can be confusing at first, and we’re happy to work with church techs on their specific system designs and also help performers integrate the new BOOM System into their setups. We encourage people to call us or ask for help via our web support portal. Of course, call flow is unpredictable, and if someone can’t answer in real-time, we try to get back to them the same day. We also try to be responsive with web support inquiries.
Church.Design: Is there anything you’d like to add, in closing?
Bader: I hope Aviom’s new BOOM System has the same positive impact that our personal mixers had when we released them 17 years ago. For myself, I feel blessed to have been a meaningful contributor to the church technology community for almost two decades.
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Learn more about Aviom here: www.aviom.com
