I don't know how often I will be posting here as I'm not a habitual forum lurker/poster/reader, but I was introduced to this forum by the Pacific Northwest Audio Society (PNWAS), and since this forum is supporting and hosting our club forum, I will in turn try to support the forum. I just don't know where anyone finds the time to blog/tweet/facebook/etc. I have a life, and that includes time to listen to music.... not in front of a computer workstation.
First, my bias - I am the CEO of Genesis Advanced Technologies. We design and manufacture loudspeakers, amplifiers, and now cables. The PNWAS use my loudspeakers, amplifier and cables for their meetings.
I was introduced to the club some years ago - when they invited me to come and demo our speakers to the club members since we were manufacturing in Seattle. I had a good time, liked that the members were more focussed on the music than the gear, and so I joined the club. The next meeting, we were supposed to listen to music various members brought. But with the club's speakers I felt that there was insufficient resolution or transparency to enjoy the music. So, I offered the club a pair of my speakers on long-term loan. It took the club 6 months and a membership vote to accept the speakers and an amplifier, and the club has had Genesis gear ever since.
I have had music in my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid, my Dad had an old Lenco turntable that I was told to KEEP MY HANDS OFF. However, whenever he was home, we would be listening to Mantovani, Xavier Cugat, Peres Prado, and the London Symphony Orchestra. In Singapore, we didn't have access to things like Heathkit, so the first tube amplifier I built was off a text book that I found in the Singapore National Library. I never got both channels to sound the same, so used it as a mono amplifier for years. I cobbled together equipment using whatever broken bits I could salvage from my Dad, uncles and cousins and built various speakers and radios.
I got hooked on programming as a kid with my Dad's Texas Instruments TI-55 programmable calculator. If I remember, it had memory for a grand total of 30 keystrokes with no IF or GOTO. When my Dad bought me my own TI-58 with *WOW* 250 steps, and branching, I was in heaven. My teachers never cottoned on to what that calculator could do for me in a math exam
Later, I graduated to cassette tapes with a Tandy TRS-80, and paper tape on a Japanese mini-computer. In my first job during my National Service (or draft), I worked with millions of punch cards first with an ICL 1900 and later with an IBM 370.
After my draft, I furthered my studies in the Imperial College, London where an indulgent aunt gave me enough food money to buy my first audiophile system. I didn't have much to eat, but I had a Rega 3 (with the old S-arm and a R100 cartridge), a Creek 4040 integrated amp and a pair of Mission 70's. Speaker cables was QED 79-strand. This was in 1983.
Imperial College London is also right next to the Royal College of Music, and I hung out there as much as I could. My friends said that I was there to meet girls, but I was enamored of their music, not feminine pulchritude.
I'm a music lover, not a gear lover, and brought my system home with me to Singapore after graduation. It served me for many years until the Creek failed, and the surrounds on the Mission rotted. By then, I was far into the computer age.
I was working to computerize the Singapore government, and to communicate with some of the people I had met "online" during college (I don't remember what the word we used - but it certainly wasn't cyberspace or online), I had a 600 baud modem and an IBM PC-clone (a Lingo 88 - developed by the same fellow who would go on to found Creative of the SoundBlaster fame). The world-wide "infrastructure" we used then was a store and forward occasional network called the Fidonet.
When the Creek died, I went back to tubes with a second hand Audible Illusions Modulus 1B preamp and a brand new Rotel 850 power amplifier. I had also been gifted a brand-new Roksan turntable. I went to Imperial College with the founders of the company, and when they were hunting for a dealer in Singapore, I volunteered to introduce them to mine. They brought a turntable to demo, and instead of bringing it home, they gave it to me. That was probably the most expensive piece of gear I owned for a long time as a poorly paid Civil Servant.
In the meantime, I had worked on a few community networks for Singapore - one for the trading community, and another for the schools. By 1991, we had proposed a national-wide network linking up the whole Government. I was in the group that had proposed that the Internet be used as the infrastructure, but we were veto'ed as "unsafe", "unreliable" and crazy. So, we quit, and we founded the first Internet/eCommerce company in Asia.
With the new job, I was also paid well enough that it was time for a major upgrade - to a pair of Maggie 3.1, a Classe CA-400, BAT VK-5 and BAT VK-P5 phono. At the height of the boom, a couple of the companies I had invested in IPO'ed. So, in 1999, the BATs were replaced by the FM Acoustics 266 preamp and the FM122 phono stage.
I was also hankering after a pair of Genesis 1's to replace my Maggies - but by the time I got to buying, Genesis Technologies had gone bankrupt. So, I ended up buying the remnants of the company from the bank, and here I am now - full time in the business to trying to deliver music to music lovers in their homes..... with an emphasis on delivering music to families, not just one audiophile sitting in the middle chair.
One thing that running Genesis did to me - it destroyed entirely my belief in the audiophile ecosystem. I find it hard to believe that there is so much bovine manure that I believed in for so long. I thought that I was at least fairly intelligent, and to have been fooled for so long........ Anyway, now, everything I do, I take back to the first principles of math and physics. As a result, Genesis may become the outcast of the industry, but as long as we find the music loving families to believe in what we do and buy our products, we will maintain our integrity and prosper.
Thanks for reading my rambling!
Cheers
Gary
First, my bias - I am the CEO of Genesis Advanced Technologies. We design and manufacture loudspeakers, amplifiers, and now cables. The PNWAS use my loudspeakers, amplifier and cables for their meetings.
I was introduced to the club some years ago - when they invited me to come and demo our speakers to the club members since we were manufacturing in Seattle. I had a good time, liked that the members were more focussed on the music than the gear, and so I joined the club. The next meeting, we were supposed to listen to music various members brought. But with the club's speakers I felt that there was insufficient resolution or transparency to enjoy the music. So, I offered the club a pair of my speakers on long-term loan. It took the club 6 months and a membership vote to accept the speakers and an amplifier, and the club has had Genesis gear ever since.
I have had music in my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid, my Dad had an old Lenco turntable that I was told to KEEP MY HANDS OFF. However, whenever he was home, we would be listening to Mantovani, Xavier Cugat, Peres Prado, and the London Symphony Orchestra. In Singapore, we didn't have access to things like Heathkit, so the first tube amplifier I built was off a text book that I found in the Singapore National Library. I never got both channels to sound the same, so used it as a mono amplifier for years. I cobbled together equipment using whatever broken bits I could salvage from my Dad, uncles and cousins and built various speakers and radios.
I got hooked on programming as a kid with my Dad's Texas Instruments TI-55 programmable calculator. If I remember, it had memory for a grand total of 30 keystrokes with no IF or GOTO. When my Dad bought me my own TI-58 with *WOW* 250 steps, and branching, I was in heaven. My teachers never cottoned on to what that calculator could do for me in a math exam
Later, I graduated to cassette tapes with a Tandy TRS-80, and paper tape on a Japanese mini-computer. In my first job during my National Service (or draft), I worked with millions of punch cards first with an ICL 1900 and later with an IBM 370.
After my draft, I furthered my studies in the Imperial College, London where an indulgent aunt gave me enough food money to buy my first audiophile system. I didn't have much to eat, but I had a Rega 3 (with the old S-arm and a R100 cartridge), a Creek 4040 integrated amp and a pair of Mission 70's. Speaker cables was QED 79-strand. This was in 1983.
Imperial College London is also right next to the Royal College of Music, and I hung out there as much as I could. My friends said that I was there to meet girls, but I was enamored of their music, not feminine pulchritude.
I'm a music lover, not a gear lover, and brought my system home with me to Singapore after graduation. It served me for many years until the Creek failed, and the surrounds on the Mission rotted. By then, I was far into the computer age.
I was working to computerize the Singapore government, and to communicate with some of the people I had met "online" during college (I don't remember what the word we used - but it certainly wasn't cyberspace or online), I had a 600 baud modem and an IBM PC-clone (a Lingo 88 - developed by the same fellow who would go on to found Creative of the SoundBlaster fame). The world-wide "infrastructure" we used then was a store and forward occasional network called the Fidonet.
When the Creek died, I went back to tubes with a second hand Audible Illusions Modulus 1B preamp and a brand new Rotel 850 power amplifier. I had also been gifted a brand-new Roksan turntable. I went to Imperial College with the founders of the company, and when they were hunting for a dealer in Singapore, I volunteered to introduce them to mine. They brought a turntable to demo, and instead of bringing it home, they gave it to me. That was probably the most expensive piece of gear I owned for a long time as a poorly paid Civil Servant.
In the meantime, I had worked on a few community networks for Singapore - one for the trading community, and another for the schools. By 1991, we had proposed a national-wide network linking up the whole Government. I was in the group that had proposed that the Internet be used as the infrastructure, but we were veto'ed as "unsafe", "unreliable" and crazy. So, we quit, and we founded the first Internet/eCommerce company in Asia.
With the new job, I was also paid well enough that it was time for a major upgrade - to a pair of Maggie 3.1, a Classe CA-400, BAT VK-5 and BAT VK-P5 phono. At the height of the boom, a couple of the companies I had invested in IPO'ed. So, in 1999, the BATs were replaced by the FM Acoustics 266 preamp and the FM122 phono stage.
I was also hankering after a pair of Genesis 1's to replace my Maggies - but by the time I got to buying, Genesis Technologies had gone bankrupt. So, I ended up buying the remnants of the company from the bank, and here I am now - full time in the business to trying to deliver music to music lovers in their homes..... with an emphasis on delivering music to families, not just one audiophile sitting in the middle chair.
One thing that running Genesis did to me - it destroyed entirely my belief in the audiophile ecosystem. I find it hard to believe that there is so much bovine manure that I believed in for so long. I thought that I was at least fairly intelligent, and to have been fooled for so long........ Anyway, now, everything I do, I take back to the first principles of math and physics. As a result, Genesis may become the outcast of the industry, but as long as we find the music loving families to believe in what we do and buy our products, we will maintain our integrity and prosper.
Thanks for reading my rambling!
Cheers
Gary
