Word: audio
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Even more important to Messer than his 10-ft. (3 m) screen or $60,000 overhead projector is the McIntosh name that adorns every piece of audio gear. And we're not referring to Steve Jobs' brand--that would be Macintosh--but to the American producer of hi-fi components, which has cultivated an insanely loyal following over the past 50 years. Messer started accumulating the brand about 20 years ago, as soon as he could afford its bank-breaking prices. He spent $25,000 on his first system--a steal compared with the four 7-ft.-tall...
...being the best--or the highest priced--doesn't guarantee profits. Attacked by Japanese copycat brands from below and other cult brands from above over the past decade, the audio market has become a rough place for niche labels like McIntosh. That led to a buyout 4 1/2 years ago by D&M Holdings, a Japanese audio company traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange--a far cry from the rural headquarters of the McIntosh Laboratory in Binghamton...
...Holdings was itself formed by the merger of Denon and Marantz, two struggling, mid-to-upper market Japanese audio firms, with an investment by the private-equity group Ripplewood Holdings. Soon after, D&M went on a consolidation spree, snapping up additional A/V brands like Boston Acoustics, Snell Acoustics, Replay TV, Escient and recently Calrec Audio, a British company that builds mixing consoles for broadcast production. Mac fit as the crown jewel. "I call us a big start-up," says Victor Pacor, D&M's president. In the past fiscal year, the company had sales of almost $1 billion...
That would be Charlie Randall, 42, since 2003 McIntosh's amicable and revered president, who started working at the company when he was a 19-year-old student at Rochester Institute of Technology. Randall was there in 1991 when the outfit was bought by Clarion, a car-audio specialist, which transformed the brand into a supplier for the luxury-car market...
...about a lack of socioeconomic progress in the African American community, ends with Howard Beale’s words from the 1976 movie “Network.” His speech is first reversed to produce a sort of poetic rhythm set against sped-up, mixed-down audio effects that convey a distinctly weird feel. Beale’s unaltered vocalizations ring out: “All I know is you got to get mad. I’m a human being, dammit! My life has value!” Harmonically, “Twinkle?...