Brock Adamson, founder and chairman of Canadian loudspeaker manufacturer, Adamson has spoken exclusively to Headliner about the company’s escalating R&D efforts, market trends and the technology shaping the industry.
When discussing the impacts of the pandemic over the past two years on the pro audio community, there are two words that tend to crop up fairly frequently: transition and diversification. Yes, you can also throw ‘challenging’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘devastating’ into the mix, but when talking about how businesses can overcome the absence of touring, it is the need to pivot and adapt that invariably dominates the conversation.
For those in the business of touring and live events, this perhaps rings truer than in any other corner of the market. Some have looked to make inroads into the studio sector, others have ramped up their efforts in the world of integrated systems. And while such sentiments may well apply to Adamson, the extent to which they have shifted focus is perhaps a little less pronounced than has been the case for others.
Long before the pandemic, the company had been investing in its installation offering, standing it in good stead for the damage inflicted on touring by Covid. The firm’s house of worship business has also remained strong throughout.
Rather than looking at how many new areas it can drive into, Adamson has spent much of the past two years making significant efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, working to provide a stable working environment for its staff, and improving the infrastructure and capabilities of its manufacturing operations.
To find out more about Adamson’s work during this time and what lies in store, we caught up with Brock Adamson, who explains, “there is quite a bit more to this story…”
How has Adamson been faring over the past 18 months?
I should like to first say that here at Adamson we all understand the devastating effect of COVID on families, careers and businesses. People’s lives have been upended and, in some cases, businesses destroyed. So, while we have done well during this upheaval, we are quite proud to have provided some form of stability for our employees and our customers.
For better or worse, we took the pandemic seriously. We accepted it as fact and worked toward solutions that would carry us through it all. I think the Canadian government was perceptive in the programs it put forward, helping businesses, schools and individuals in creative ways. And here we are.
Is the market starting to return to its pre-pandemic state?
‘The market’ in our case has a significant component of touring product. So, while we can see movement in a positive direction in that market, we all have a long way to go. For some time now, in the Adamson product line-up, there has been a shift in use toward increased use in integration projects.
An acceleration of this trend might be a reflexive response from the current markets – you must sell what you can – so people’s energy naturally shifts to something useful, toward projects that can be completed. But for us, there is quite a bit more to this story.
As it happens, we had started prior to the pandemic to shift our products in a new direction, both in touring and installed products. There is of course a large overlap in applications for most of these products.
That direction, more specifically, has us focussed on AVB networks, signal processing, workflow and system control, and of course, power electronics. The new systems that embody this technology are referred to as the CS Series.
Our CS Series systems have done extraordinarily well. But of course, we began the development of this technology long before the 'Corona Depression'. And, because of the enormous increase in interest in smaller flexible systems, we were perfectly positioned with a new product range.
How has Adamson utilised the various lockdown periods over the past 18 months?
We’ve been able to engage in some infrastructure projects – take on some things on the wish list. We have upgraded the power systems for the entire plant. This involved a new main transformer and connection to a new 44 kilovolt primary system that’s connected to a 10-megawatt solar farm. For me that is a great step forward.
I know this is boring stuff for many, but it is what makes manufacturing happen. Beyond the primary supply, we also put in a 500kW standby generator and a big central UPS. So those power grid interruptions in stormy weather – lightning strikes – will not slow us down at all.
It is interesting that all that work is actually preliminary to the planning for our own one-megawatt solar array. We are looking forward to that for several reasons. First, net metering in solar power means we can balance our seasonal energy use against variable generation of power flowing back to the grid. This will significantly reduce our cost of electricity now, and as well, limit future increases. This helps to control the future cost of producing our product.
The second reason, that I find quite exciting, is that this represents a meaningful step toward a much smaller carbon footprint. The reduced cost of solar-electric supply will also enable shifting some natural gas energy use to cleaner electrical equipment.
Metal finishing uses a large quantity of heat as it stands, but in the colder parts of the Canadian winter, the gas consumption jumps sharply. The great thing is that there is a net cost benefit to moving even slightly greener.
