#74: Dennis Althar (Althar Audio) (Compressed/Short Edit)

Anything that affects our senses because we seek out things they always talk about
this business thing if I hear one more time They say what's the pain point? Do
they miss all the pleasure point? You don't get comfortable seats because of pain
you get comfortable. You'll seek comfort. You'll seek good things You'll run away
from pain So do you want to only sell because of the pain point or do you want
to have things where it's a pleasure point and people Feel good about good about
what you've got. People love music. Why would they sell all those CDs or streaming
or all this? Because we're wired for sound. Let's discover the Cleveland
entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those
supporting them.
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are
building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today I have the real
pleasure of speaking with Dennis Alther. This conversation is our longest to date,
and only more wisdom is unlocked the deeper into the throes of Dennis's mind we go.
Today, Dennis founded and runs Alther Audio here in Slavic Village within Cleveland
where he sells premier audio systems. But as you'll hear, Dennis not only has a
deep passion for unlocking the highest levels of audible literacy, but there is a
real commitment to the craft itself and questioning across the board why we've always
done things the way we've done things and really digging into and solutioning where
the justification for the way things are today is that this has always been the way
that we have done it. This curiosity Dennis carries with him has exposed him to a
breadth of experiences from a prodigal expertise in electronics to the United States
Air Force, to medical technology, to audio systems. And in this conversation,
we really cover everything from Dennis's early life, to heart electronics, to
entrepreneurship, to philosophy itself. This really was a special conversation,
and I hope you all enjoy it.
Welcome Dennis. It is a real pleasure to have you on. Once again, I'll bring up
Bob Sopko who back through the archives here was actually one of the first guests
we've had on the podcast and is kind of an ultimate maven here in Cleveland making
connections for the show and and bringing folks together. I'll actually let Bob set
the stage here a little bit because the way he introduced me to you was really
kind of extraordinary. He introduced you as his friend, as someone who has used your
own inventiveness to help bring yourself to a productive life, as someone who read
every book on electronics in the library by the time You were seven as a community
builder, as a veteran, as an entrepreneur, as a colleague of Steve Wozniak since the
'70s. Now you're building and manufacturing here in Cleveland, incredible sound
systems. There's just a lot to unpack and uncover here. I'd love to dive into this,
leaving the floor open to you to take us through your journey and your past as we
work our way towards some of the more specific things. But I'd love to just hear a
little bit about yourself. Well, I would first off say that I'm not a colleague of
Steve Wozniak, but I've known him. So he'll return my emails generally. So it's not
like we work together. But that's another story. So where should we start on this
journey here? Yeah, I think I'd love to start, maybe even as far back as your
interest in electronics as kind of the common theme that ties,
as I have seen in a lot of your work together, maybe stems from that. It's all
about technology. I would consider myself an Uber geek. I live for electronics and
mechanics and anything that's creative and you could Make the world a better place.
So as you as you'd said, I started reading books on electronics when I was a kid
Mainly because I was in the projects and after I was out of the projects I had,
you know, like three half brothers and you know, stepfathers that weren't the best
people and One of them always had that where you were to be seen but never heard.
So I made as much Time as I could away from the house and I spent a lot of time
in the library reading about a lot of sci -fi love sci -fi read everything in
electronics I remember reading about how tv's work can go this is simple this is so
logical and then I read all the stuff on the children's side and then I snuck over
to adult side ran all that stuff and really started repairing you know stereos and
tv's and stuff at our early early age I'd repair anything for a buck in parts. So
and I got really good at troubleshooting quite quite good and understanding how but
I couldn't just repair anything I always had a modified it was like if you had a
five tube radio and it would take time to warm up and come on I would put what's
called a diode across the power switch that would be the opposite of the power
supply that it would keep the tubes warm but it wouldn't give them and then when
you threw the switch it would short by the diode and instant on television instant
on radios and no one had that back then so I was always tinkering always adding
more parts or taking parts out and got quite good at it so really part of my life
I bought on my own test equipment and had my first job and I was probably around
nine or ten working Working in a hardware store learn how to put together bikes and
all that kind of good stuff And then as I went through life due to my one I was
really great at electronics. I really knew that I was in Summer I went to Ballin
Wallis College and part of a program called upper bound and I kind of snuck away
from home after 9th grade I started staying with friends and couchsurfing and you
know the home situation stunk so bad But I did graduate from high school. I was on
my own pretty much. I was actually Emancipated they call it legally and I always
had multiple jobs at work I I could go without sleeping maybe sleeping three four
hours a night So I was really productive always building stuff always and and I had
a passion for sound and passion for for pictures and Electronics and cars, you know,
I could work. I owned a ton of cars. When I was eight years old, I was already
buying and selling cars. So, you know, you could, you could own a car at any age.
You couldn't drive it. So at one time I had five cars across from where we lived
in a here in Slavic village. I don't know who owned the property. It was an empty
lot and I had five cars over there and I'd swap cars and, you know, it was crazy.
It was crazy. So no hot wheels, real cars, not real cars, you know, but all of
them are real junk. I mean, you're talking about these things had may pop tires,
they may pop at any moment, you know, they were, they were pretty, pretty sore
cars, they were ready, they were passed ready for being for the Scrap yard. But
they ran, they ran. My one brother passed away by sleeping in his car and the
fumes got to him. And at that point, I was around 17. And and go, you know, I
really am good at electronics. I'm really good at electronics. But who's gonna
believe you? You know, like, well, you taught yourself, well, what school did you go
to this, that, and the other? And actually I'd had an opportunity to go to Exeter.
And my mother at that time was a little narcissistic, you know, people are what
they are. And it meant she would go off well for her sooner. So that wasn't gonna
happen. Before then, I had a chance to skip three grades when I was in elementary
school, same story. So when that happened, I figured, you know, this is time to get
out of here. That's when I kind of went on my own and to back up a little bit.
And then when my brother passed away, I figured, well, maybe if I joined the Air
Force and I told people, well, I, you know, I had, where do you know electronics?
So I was in the Air Force. Then that would validate that I actually knew
electronics, because most people say, well, if you're in the military, did
electronics, that's even better than going to college for a trade school. So I
joined the Air Force, I went to their electronic school in Keisler, after basic of
course, and I had a two and a half year course, I think I did it in about eight
weeks, I had the highest scores they ever had. You know, just took a test every
day, that's all they'd let you do is one test a day or I would have been out of
there a lot sooner. So in about eight weeks, I took all the tests, ended up going
to the Southeast Asia to the Philippines and working on things like Commando Escort
and presidential communications and sensor program and things called TOF and all this
microwave stuff and everything basically in the Philippines,
Thailand. So I had a great career. I was working, did work with a three star
general and didn't have any rank. I remember he used to say, "Looks at me one
day," and he goes, "Well, what did you do to get busted?" I go, "I never got any
stripes," you know, because by the time you'd be over in the Philippines, on any
career, you usually had a stripe or two. I didn't have any. I said, "I would love
to have you. You can give me one if you'd like." I made airmen in the year and
airmen in the base and all that kind of stuff, so I was pretty involved in things.
And that was right in around '72. And then at the end of that, I got transferred
to the states to go to Panama City, Florida. And that's right when Vietnam ended.
And they said, well, if you want to get rid of 40 ,000 people on your job, what
you're doing right now, no longer exists because it's in direct support of what some
of the stuff we're doing in Vietnam. Would you like an early out with full
benefits? And I go, well, let me look that up and think about that. And So I'll
have medical and college and GI bill for buying a house and My purpose is to go
in and have people believe that I know something about electronics Yeah, I think
I'll take that deal. So the next day I was out of the Air Force. It was
unbelievable So when I got out of the Air Force, I you know immediately started
looking for a job I went on I never got on unemployment. I came back to Cleveland
of all things. I'm leaving Panama City, Florida, coming back to Cleveland. So, you
know, I'm sure there's something totally wrong with my brain there because of the
nice warm climate. And then you come back to, well, you don't like the weather
here. Wait a minute. You know, I had a friend was a weatherman here. He left
because the weather didn't agree with him. It was just so anyone to work for a
company that repaired medical equipment and computer peripherals, big things like what
they call XY plotters large -scale plotters and had those kind of clients. They did
a lot of what's called ultrasound back then and that was like in the 77. So I
worked with them for about a year and then I kept having people from like we did
work for Bobby Brooks and a few other customers and they were constantly calling me
by the way I was the best service repairman in the country. So when somebody
couldn't fix something I'd be going in places and I was working 80 hour weeks. I
was a beast. So I started my own company because people were the guys,
especially Bobby Brooks, are saying you got to come to work because their service on
their equipment, it was a company called Gerber made their big plotters that drew
their dress patterns and their closest service was out of Connecticut, I believe. And
I could go in and service something an hour. They'd have to fly somebody in, get
parts. I would half the time I could repair right down to the transistor on the
boards everything. I've ever serviced Your name gets around I end up doing works for
Bobby Brooks the next thing you know I'm doing service for Richmond brothers and on
they've got big laser cutters cutting out suits and doing work for General tire and
then BF Goodrich and and general tire and All the tire companies they'd have
research equipment and they'd have stuff that was abandoned child nobody took care of
it anymore so I was either working on super state -of -the -art stuff or stuff that
was extremely old and no one know how to service it so that was my two points
anything that everybody's service center doing I didn't have any interest in that but
stuff that's really really old no one knows how to repair and stuff that's state -of
-the -art no one knows how to appear. And both of those ends are very rewarding
because you're actually doing something nobody else can do. And that was my way of
getting self -worth, I guess. Everybody has a reason why God put them here and mine
is to do electronics. So the founding insight was really one of deep technical
expertise and seeing that something is now Possible that people aren't thinking about
and and not hard to do we started building computer analysis systems Which was the
the off -growth then as we were building more and more computer systems We realized
the real business is the video recorders because I could sell those to everybody
that makes these analysis systems They cost 80 a hundred thousand dollars and I
could ship that you didn't have to ship a whole desk with an Apple 2 computer and
a bit bad and monitors and disk drives and so that went pretty good until you know
basically 9 /11 happened and while all this is going on I've been off the Skywalker
Ranch for THX and I ended up doing a beyond the consumer stuff I ended up being
the tap representative for Ohio which I could say now I'd go in and you know
evaluate the movie theaters that were THX if that's the Thompson the Homan experiment
is what that stands for and Thompson Homan was their heart head of engineering for
Star Wars and You know, they did Star Wars. They went out listen to it in the
theater. They go this sucks We've got to put a standard down so all the movies are
the same and the same quality and that's what Lucas film was all about So I would
go and sit in the theaters and make sure everything was working the way it should
and that included like the The the the signs on the bathrooms, what the parking lot
looked like. It's all about if people go to a THX theater, which is kind of not
so much anymore, but at that time it was, they have to pay a lot of money. And
it's saying, it's like, you know, when you go to McDonald's, you know what you're
gonna get. The French fries will always be cooked the same. So you know, when you
go to a THX theater, you know that it's gonna be the exact same as it will be at
another theater in California or Canada or, Canada or wherever you go. So I would
do that for a while. So anyway, after 9 /11, I go, you know what? I am just
tired, I've had enough of this. I decided to kind of, and we had had a new
invention that was pretty pronounced. We were gonna build an analysis system to look
at X -rays digitally, 'cause they just came out with digital on viewing stations. The
viewing stations were half a million dollars. So we had somebody, a major group was
gonna buy us, give me a lot of money, a lot of money, and give me a really great
salary. So for about a year, we danced with them and right when 9 /11 happened, we
were gonna actually do the deal two weeks later and that stopped that deal. And
that group went from having 400 Employees they have and like now probably 10.
So if I'd gotten on board with them, it probably would have been a downhill run
for us anyway. So with that I kind of set back for a couple of years and repaired
all the way I think we put about 3500 vcrs into the marketplace across all the.
Cardiac some of them an ultrasound we had a fair amount in military a lot of
research places used our vcrs We kind of made a name for it. It was a real slick
looking box. It was really cool. We did all the trade shows. We'd go to the
American Heart, American College, the RSNA. We'd do all the big trade shows around
the country and knew all the head radiologists that, you know, Cedar Sinai and the
Mayo Clinic and all these, we had stuff everywhere. And it was great because we put
it in the universities first and it would just spread. They would tell their
friends, and it's a very close knit society. And when we picked up all the OEMs on
our stuff, when you get a $2 million lab, some of our VCRs were $10 ,000 to $20
,000. The competitors were $100 ,000, $80 ,000, and we outperformed them.
And our material, it was $600 for a reel -to -reel hour long tape. Ours was $20
bucks for two hours. So you do the mass, you know, and you could store them on a
shelf. They were on real rules. You had to wind the thing, you know, and put it
in all that craziness. So I sat back for a couple of years. I just repaired the
machines 'cause we had enough of them in the field and it had been their mean
failure time was eight years. And people use these things for a long time. And I'd
get them back and do a complete rebuild and send them out. It was a one -man show,
probably made more to my pocket Then when we were running the business because they
didn't have all the overhead and all that stuff So then I finally kind of wound
down a little bit and then I've always had this passion for audio So the the real
story is we have an acquaintance and this acquaintance was doing inner city preaching
at the Tleeland Boys and Girls Club gym Now if you've never heard anybody speak in
a gym, it's less than deal, right? It's like Echo City. So,
so you go in a gym, I would take a set of really good speakers, they're a company
called Tanoi, it's a real high end. They're like number two in studios worldwide
outside of America. And a nice mixture and all this stuff, you go to the back of
the gym, and you go, I have no idea what this guy is saying. It's like, just,
it's like being in a cavern. And by the way, this guy was a former drug dealer.
And he had brought 160 people to hear, to know Christ, most of them as former
customers. So he'd have this place packed because they're giving them food and
jackets and everything else. But I think a lot of the people were there for the
food, the jackets and all the stuff because they certainly weren't hearing what he
had to say. (laughing) I'm there and I couldn't understand what he was saying. So I
actually went home after a few of these little you know church services on Sunday
in the boys club gym I go home and I pray about it and everything I've ever built
by the way has been in lucid dreams whenever I've had a problem I've well slept on
it and in color I'm a color dreamer I would do all the circuitry if you ever
watch like the prisoner of war things you know yeah yeah all the circuitry I'm
working it all out my mind and since I've done the the stuff in the military and
since I did this stuff with ultrasound and ultrasounds, really kind of simple, it's
called beamforming and I could give you a quick explanation if anybody will put them
to sleep out in the audience. - I know, I would love to hear it. - Imagine if you
will, a perfectly flat pond, right? There's no waves. If you drop a rock,
as we all know, 'cause I think most of us have dropped rocks in the pond, it goes
out in waves, big circles. Now, if you line up 10 people at the beach on that
perfectly smooth pond and you line them up 10 feet apart and you have one guy
drops a rock in the pond and the next guy counts the 20 and he drops a rock in
the pond and the next guy counts the 20 and he drops a rock in the pond those
waves will combine and you'll have a perfect straight wave going off on a 45 degree
angle to where the last guy drops the rock Can you imagine that I'm visualizing if
you start at the outer two guys and they drop rocks at the same time And then the
guy in the middle is the last one They'll make a concave looking wave and that's
how they focus ultrason is how they fire those crystals There's usually 64 to 128
crystals and they fire them in groups And so they could they can point it back and
forth and that's actually how 5g works 5G works with their antennas, it's the delay
between them, and that's how they focus what they're doing. Okay, so if that makes
sense, so what we came up with as a speaker, if you have a line of speakers, say
we've got nine speakers, and if you put your head right next to the center speaker,
that center speaker is only going a couple inches to hit your ear, right? The one
at the top is going a lot of inches to hit your So sound is a very short
wavelengths and your human hearing is most sensitive the time delay If you change
volume on something you have to double the volume for human It could be 2db on
professional people, but you got a double the volume. It's called 3db You have to
double the volume to perceive a difference So if you have 10 watts, you got to go
to 20 watts if you have a radio that's see where that's 100 watts and you got one
at 125, they're identical volume, identical. You gotta go to 200 to perceive it gets
a little bit louder. So you can see it starts using power really, really fast.
You go one watt, two watt, you're in the thousands before you know it. And
frequency, everybody goes when you know, James Taylor sounds a little bassy on those
speakers and you go, has he ever visited your house and sang to you without singing
through a PA system. You have no idea what James Taylor sounds like. You know a
piano sound like? You know what violin sound like? But most things in a movie is
totally man -made. You have no idea what that boom is supposed to sound like. And
most things in people singing, you have no idea what their voice sounds like because
you've never actually heard them, right? So your idea of frequency is garbage. You
don't have any idea what's too high, too low, unless you've worked with the people,
but time delay, you're really sensitive to. If somebody talks at the right side of
your, you're standing on your right side, it hits your right ear, and then a few
itsy bitsy bit in time, it hits your left ear, same value. That little delay will
tell you intensive a degree where that person is standing in the room. That little
delay around your nose, and with mine, I've got a really big knows, it's a big
delay. So my brain actually calculates for that. But on most people, it's a short
delay. So maybe that's why I'm a little bit better at hearing I got that big delay
working for. So what happens is that if you've got a line of speakers, the top
speaker is back in time. So if you gave it a pulse, you'd see a bunch of pulses,
if you were to electronically look at it, it wouldn't be one pulse. So it's like
guys are rowing a boat and everybody's kind of And there's you know, there's nine
guys and they're all rolling at different speeds, but they're it's kind of moving
forward You get sound coming out of this thing, but it's blurry Can you picture
that because things are arriving and it's just like you've got double vision? It's
it's making everything smooch together Well by time aligning the speakers and we're
doing it passively in the speakers companies of time -aligned speakers They put an
amplifier on every single speaker and they do the delays digitally and they it's a
network thing and it takes time so it's actually back in time they can't do it at
real time and what we do is we have a secret sauce in our box to where when we
send the sound they're all time aligned so that the things got three and a half
inch speakers that three and a half inch speaker is very light and easy to move
okay all of them combine the overall surface area is rather large.
When you put nine times the surface area of the little one guy, so you get this
big thing moving really fast with a lot of control, but it's all focused on the
center speaker. So when it sends sound out, instead of being 90 degrees up and down
and 90 degrees side to side, we're three degrees up and down. It shoots straight
ahead and almost nothing side to side. So we've got these, they cover The Cleveland
Zoo with 10 of these. Oh, wow They go thousands of feet outdoors and the volume
when you're 10 feet away sounds exactly like to your perception That when you're a
thousand feet away And 180 degrees across so we put one or two of them on a press
box in the football field We've got them at Western Reserve Academy. They've got
them in their chapel. They've got them on their soccer field to get them on the
football field. It will cover a whole football field. You could clearly hear it in
the visitor's side just and you could sit underneath it and be on this call 'cause
the way that it focuses the sound and incidentally, that's the whole thing like I
put my name upside down. When you go to a meeting, my big beef is most things are
done because this is the way people's always done them. You go on a meeting room,
the speakers are in the ceiling. I don't know anyone other than somebody deformed
whose ears point up, your ears point forward, you reject sound behind you.
So if it's above you, if you go home and you could try this, put on it, get two
identical TVs, set one behind you, put a program on, watch the screen in front of
you, play the sound from behind you, and if it's a movie you haven't seen, you'll
have trouble following the movie, even though it's crystal clear, 'cause it doesn't
sink. It's like when you look off the road, you drive off the road. So localization
is a big deal on intelligibility. If somebody's speaking and the sound's coming from
where they're at, you think that's them talking louder. It shouldn't sound like a PA
system. Sound should be natural. And most sound systems, everybody sounds like,
you hear them on most sound systems because they have a horn and a woofer.
the woofer's got a lot of mass, and when you start the woofer moving back and
forth, it literally is going about 120 miles an hour, stopping dead and changing
direction. So it's got too much, if you take a train and try to stop it, it isn't
gonna stop. But these little bitty speakers, they can stop on a dime. So the
clarity is way, way beyond what you'll get with a big speaker, but You get the
same amount of air. All you care about at the end of the day is how much air can
you move? And if you don't try to go low frequencies, 95 % of all energy is 100
Hertz down. That's like a low bump, okay? So when you're trying to get a speaker
that's a 15 or an 18 to go down, they can't, I don't think there's any can go
down to 20 Hertz. They claim 20, but they really are in 40 or 50 or 60.
They can't do it without doing another frequency that's like if they do 20 there's
more 40 than 20. So you hear bass but it's blurry. It's not like to do to do it
properly we'll have we've taken like one of our liner our beam formers down to the
canton fairgrounds and they had eight subwoofers each one would be the size of a
small refrigerator laying on its side and we could cover of fairgrounds with one of
these little stinking columns. They're only 40 inches long and they're six inches
wide, five inches deep and they weigh 17 pounds and they're weatherproof. So when we
went about building the speakers, we did it from A to Z. We made them 40 inches
long 'cause their array is within a human hearing when you're sitting or standing
from 95 % of the people. And by being 40 inches long, when you do extrusions,
they're 10 feet. And if my great math skills from South High inner city is right,
that's three. So we don't like to waste stuff. You know, I'm not going to pay for
dumpsters. We are so frugal. It's unbelievable. So when we cut something, it's thirds
exactly. Okay. And when you ship stuff, because we plan on shipping thousands and
tens of thousands of this, because when people find out find out what we're doing.
By the way, all of our sales, we've sold about 400 of these over the past few
years, have all been referrals from our customers, not even referrals. We'll put them
at VAS, for example. VASJ in Euclid, they call somebody in North Cannon and say,
"Get up, I hate this." We did, Alex Bevin buys it. He tells all of his friends,
"You gotta hear these things because they're outrageous. They're just so different
than anything anybody's ever heard. We'll put a microphone dead on the front of one
of these things and scream and not get feedback. We go in and do a demo in a
church, they just write you a check and hand it to you. (laughs) It's like, what
do you, all the problems with sound is because people don't look at the problem
from beginning to end. And it's everywhere in life is that way. When you go in a
shower, I always use this example. You reach through to adjust the heat of the
shower. So if it's scalding, you're reaching through the scalding water to adjust the
shower. Every bathroom is plumbed like this. And you go, well, if you ran the
plumbing another couple of feet, you could put the knob on the side or the backside
of the tub. Oh, but that's more plumbing. You just brought it 300 damn feet. What's
another three feet? It's like stupidity. It's like you get in your car and You have
to have your headlights on when your wipers are on. So since they ever started
making cars, if you turn on your wipers, your headlights should come on. You
shouldn't have to do when you enter somebody on your iPhone and Palm did this and
the UPS does it. You enter somebody's address on your phone and it starts off in
the alphabet keyboard. And you go, "How many people do you know whose address starts
with a letter? how many the majority start with a number and actually if you put
in the zip code it should automatically put in the city and state and all that
other nonsense you know and then you put their address and it should go straight to
the number pad because everybody's address starts with a number so most things most
things are backwards you go in a bathroom right so you go on an elevator you know
I got this little thing where you go in, you got to have a medical exam, right?
So you go in, the first thing, it's a two story building, you go in the elevator,
what do you see? First floor, second floor, and you go, shit, what floor am I on?
You know, how do I get there? What's the other floor? Shouldn't they just and
buttons cost a lot of money, right? So wouldn't be better just have one button that
says, go to the other floor, go to the other damn floor, just go, you know, I
mean, where are you going Well, if you're on one, you can only go to two. If
you're on two, you can only go to one. Well, I have button one and two. I mean,
to me, that seems like absurd, right? It's just like when you do the pole vault
backward, you know, the guy goes like, oh, damn, we've been doing it wrong all
along. Overhead speakers are horrible 'cause they gotta be up really high in order
to distribute. So you need an awful lot of them. And it costs money to run stuff
in the ceilings. In a gym, we did Beachwood High School with two of our columns.
We took down 12 of a three -letter company. Starts with Jay. Much better coverage,
much better sound. We put a subwoofer in the corner. You'd swear the sound's coming
out of those little columns 'cause we go down to 100 hertz. We don't try to do
lows 'cause when you speak, a telephone goes from 300 to 3000 for our speech
intelligibility. That's all you need. We go from 100 to 18 ,000 ruler flat.
That's one of the reasons the ruler flat on frequency and time more importantly,
that's why when we put a mic up right next to the speaker, it doesn't squeal
'cause it's exactly. If you look at people when they EQ, they cut down the
squealing frequency because it's actually hotter than the rest of the stuff. Does
that make sense? So we've gone in a different way and plus the cabinets generate
sound. So we've got a cabinet that's dead or no door now we fill 18 little
chambers with something called wham wave absorption material so that when you dump
your hand on the side of the cabinet, it would sound like a music box music box,
you don't make any noise besides the sound coming out of the speaker. The box
creates a tone sound right. So it's sound coming off the side of the box is trying
to kill the sound that's coming off the front of the box. were real dead in there.
People don't realize that the sound on a speaker is loud as it is in front of a
speaker, and they fill them with fiberglass and all that. The back of the speaker
is the same cone, right? You can agree. The cone on the front is the same cone
looking at the back of the speaker. So as loud as it is in your room at loud
volumes, it's that loud in that little space behind the speaker. So what do you do
with that energy? Well, we absorb it. We turn it to heat, basically. And then when
you look at a grill, everybody's familiar with the metal grills. We're talking
commercial speakers, not home stuff. Okay. Yeah. You look at a grill on a speaker.
Okay. It's got these little perforations. Well, if you take that grill off and put
it in the water faucet, you'll find out the air ain't getting through there real
good. Only 40 % of the air is getting through those puny little holes trying to
force itself through the holes. So it's bouncing back some of that energy to the
cone and then through to the inside of the cabinet, coming back, hitting the cone
again, hitting the face. So when you have a pulse, it just keeps pulsing forever.
What we did was we have bars, stainless steel bars that we powder coat. And what
they do is the sound comes out, it's like looking at just straight bars like in a
prison 'cause the sound wants to get out of this gel cell, right? So they're round.
And since it's round, it does the same thing as an airplane wing. As it hits that
round thing, it has to build a pressure on the sides of that round bar. And then
on the front side, it's got a negative energy. So they actually goes and forms
right back to what it was, you're not breaking in a bunch of little holes all
trying to fill up and all that. And by the way, it's got frets, just like on a
guitar. The whole front of these things is a solid chunk of aluminum. The outer box
is plastic, plastic because plastic's weatherproof. It's got some great features.
Plastic does and it's indestructible pretty much. In fact, we cover the whole thing
with truck bed liner and you could throw it down the stairs. You could jump up and
down on these things. The bar is being stainless steel. You literally can lay on on
its back and jump up and down on it. But we don't disturb the sound and we take
the heat that's inside the box because if you put 100 watts to a speaker, consider
it the same as a 100 watt light bulb. So even if you know nothing about wattage,
you know, if you grab a hold of, if it's not an LED, you grab a hold of a 100
watt bulb, it's hot. These speakers can handle 350 watts. Damn hot in the cabinet,
95 % of that energy turns to heat. That sound, 95%. So you have to feel that,
you know, those little heat lamps, that's what's going on inside the box, where we
heat up the front baffle, it goes up those little frets, every, you know,
however it is, I think we got for them. And it goes up the bars, and then the
speakers are blowing over the bars and cooling themselves. So everything about it is,
you know, so anyway, my whole thing in life is to change the world. So we probably
have not grown the company as much as we should, because I'm truly a wasn't yet.
I'm about changing the world for intelligibility. And I don't think we're in the
speaker business. We're in the communications business. I'm about what's in my brain
to appear in your brain as undisturbed as possible. But if you got a friend, you
know, whatever comes out of your mouth and lands on their ears is not what your
mouth put out. So when you're communicating, be it because of race differences or
ethnic differences or religious differences, or background, whether you're poor or
you're rich. - Even language, we don't think in letters. - And we don't think in
letters, and visually. So if you've got really poor visual, like everybody does
PowerPoints, ask backward. They should be forced to look at a projection screen,
the size of what they're gonna use in a room, and totally do their PowerPoint on
that screen, 'cause everybody puts a little bit of shit you can't breathe from the
back of the room. So it's just wasting everybody's time. And people are watching the
PowerPoint rather than the person speaking. They're looking at that and it's looking
at you to get you involved with the people 'cause it's that eye contact that shows
you the soul of a person and it's the facial expansions. And we miss that, we miss
out on that. So communications is about what's in my brain to be able to formulate
in your brain, so we're both in sync about what we're talking about. And you'll
know that, especially after doing teller radiography and all the stuff I've done in
medical and other things you go, you're talking about one thing they're imagining
something totally different. You know, when you talk to your dog, he kind of gets
it food in his name.
But they get it, they can sense when you're not feeling good. They can sense when
you're angry. Because we have abandoned that because of all of our speech. We're so
busy. Of course, here I am talking away, and I'm not giving you a chance to say
anything, but we don't really listen to other people. We don't really convey
information. I want to make the world a better place. So I'm not the kind of guy
to build the business, and it will build on its own in spite of me. It always
has. But I'm not about profit, and I'm not about, I believe fully, I'm in the
inner city of Cleveland, Slavic Village. I've I've done a lot with that was the
Lieutenant Governor for the Qantas and all this. I'm more about giving. I'm a giving
person, there's different kind of people. But I believe that if you help other
people, you're gonna make it in the world. 'Cause that's really all that matters is
at the end of the day, your network is your network, your net worth is your
network. But it's knowing that you've had other people meet their goals and
accomplish they want to accomplish and help them. That's the best, that's the best
feeling you could get. What other questions do we have? How long are we going
already? Are you ready? I don't know, we're just getting rolling here. So Cleveland
is always, when it comes to software, they're all about, everybody's about software,
software, software, software. And those companies, I would, I would, I would dare say
a lot of them, it's like that hockey stick, and then it falls back the other way
or they sell out and they move out of the city they move out of Cleveland some of
the biggest companies as soon as they grow they're out of here manufacturing is the
backbone of this country it really is but it's like a it's like a bastard child
you know and we're not we've never looked for investment in fact we've always been
totally cash we've not we've owned all of our vehicles we own like a you know a
couple million worth of test equipment were and that's part of why we're successful
because we're able to Actually prove things the way it should be And we're clever.
We're not smart, but we're really clever so It's it's all about building communities
and people so you can't say you want to support The inner city and support people
to make their lives better and then do it out in the suburbs because right now
Especially people don't even there's no Transportation out there so the company's out
in the sun and in far out there There's no way for people to get there to work
You want to help people enrich their lives Manufacturing here for for hardwares is
hardwares that a lot tougher than anything else, but we've got eight suppliers We
don't build everything ourselves. We've got a place that the laser cuts the metal
work for us We have somebody that powder coats that for us things are TIG Well,
the you know everything about it. We've got other people supplying us. That's all
made in Ohio, baby Veteran -owned made in Ohio. Yeah, we're proud of what we do.
Oh, it's it's an improbable story. Yeah So I think we're at an opportunity time
Omar Bose is gone Clips has been gone for a while and the people that started most
of these major There's only a few sound companies doing commercial. There are
gazillions are gazillions doing retail residential stuff. I mean, there's so many
speaker companies out there, it's unbelievable, but not in commercial, not in
commercial. And we've got other cute things about ours. Ours will hang with two
screws on the wall and you hang it and you can put a padlock, you unlock the
padlock, you lift it up. It runs, we could go 500 feet with telephone wire,
with telephone wire and not lose Enough volume where you could perceive it's gotten
softer not lose two decibels at 500 feet of telephone wire and copper is expensive
So you can actually wire up a church or in a place with a staple gun like they
used to use to run your telephone wire We run on telephone wire and we're passive.
We don't have to plug it in We don't need a computer to run it. So we've we've
addressed everything That's the negative things about speakers, speakers. But it's more
than that. We've got a whole vision about what we're going to do in the future.
We've got some great things we want to do in education because that's really where
the passion is. We've got to get the kids to have a great education and a great
work experience and really be able to connect with each other and connect with the
teacher. And you can't connect with a teacher in a classroom. Anything that's over
60 feet, you can't communicate. You're They're shouting and the kid in the back of
the room doesn't get an education. I feel blessed. My name starts with an A. Geez,
I was in the front row. So I got the best education going just because I start
with an A. You know, hey, what's the odds of that happening? And it's a weird
name. Altar is so much different than anybody else. You put ALTHAR. I'm the first
day on the web. I don't have to do any SEO stuff. We're right at the top, right
at the top. We figure we'll on the buying all those other companies and make them
a little division of ours. Yeah, you know, that's that's what I tell people by
them, we're going to buy them. And you got to think big. I think Cleveland,
everybody looks at Cleveland, they go, Oh, you got to go out to the coast. I think
we've got so much brainpower here and so much talent because of the medical,
obviously, because of our industry. And because we have a heart, it's a passion.
It's really a passion that people want to build businesses and help each other out.
I don't care. And everybody is important in the world. I don't care whether somebody
is washing dishes or what their job is their job is just as important as anybody
else's and you know when you military debt jet fighter ain't going to go without
that JP for fuel and if the guy didn't have the dishes is worst and he gets
Montezuma's revenge. It's tough to fly a fighter. And if he doesn't have his radar
and his weapons don't work So every single person is just as important as the next
they're either here to benefit you or to give you a lesson Of what you shouldn't
be doing. So everybody's important. We got a treatment like they're important. That's
a beautiful way to look at the world So I'm sorry. I didn't give you a chance No,
it's not it's not - It's your story, yeah. - We have a waterfall in Saabah Village
that's the highest in the county. We have a 42 -foot waterfall. And if the powers
would be, it's twice the size of the screw in falls one, and it's right on
Broadway. - Right in Saabah Village? - It's called Mill Creek Falls. And the metro
park spent $2 million building walkways and stuff. It's freaking crazy great.
Our metro parks, that green necklace that we have is unfreaking believable that you
can go out and within a minute be right there in nature. Nature is phenomenal.
And you know what we need to do more of is since the beginning of time people sat
around and told stories. Everybody's life has a story and every one of them is
worth hearing. And to just sit around and break bread is there's nothing better.
Yeah. Anyway, any other thoughts any questions jeff i've got i haven't asked any
questions i know you told me you're gonna take the job of the john and karson or
what's his name that's on tv now. I don't know that i've i've needed to ask any
questions i could i could imagine that you are able to.
You kind of speak to all the things that you see in the world that are done
because it's the way they've always been done. And I go,
what in the hell are they thinking? And it's, it's everywhere. I mean, it's, it's
literally everywhere. And it comes from people doing what's always been done. It's
like when they, when they stop a car, they either have brake shoes or dispatch. So
you're telling me the very first people ever built cars were that damn smart. And
here we are, you know decades later still stopping them the same damn way or let's
say if you didn't have rubber How would you make the how would you got to imagine
whatever you're leaning on for your technology imagine to yourself? What if we didn't
have that technology? How could we accomplish the same thing? That's when you end up
with things that's beyond what you're doing now because any technology It's better
and better and better till it reaches like a brick wall, then it can't get no
better. Makes sense? But then you stand back and you look at it like right now.
And a good example, a lot of the stuff that we're relying on because of supply, we
can't get. So you're going to very quickly find that we're going to find better
ways and someone will end up being better than what we've been doing because this
is the way we've always built this. And when you do it a different way, you might
find out it's actually a better way of doing it. Yeah, it's just unfortunate that
sometimes it takes the the catalyst of something truly catastrophic to give you that
deliberate pause Well, I mean Dennis. This was a an enlightening conversation
I arrived truly. I think we could probably talk for for many more hours, but
It's reaching that you said hour and a half, so I'm still got - In six minutes, we
gotta beat the other guys. - Well, I'll ask you a closing question then, 'cause I
am curious. - Sure. - When you think about all of the problems that you observe in
the world, why is it that you chose to focus on this audible literacy and
communication? I imagine you really could have tackled any variety of problems.
- I give my take on business, is that okay? is the final word? Sure. I will
present to you that trains are in the same business as McDonald's.
Do you know what that business is? And everybody always goes there in a real estate
business because they watched the movie. Do you know what McDonald's real business is
and what made them explode? They shift time. When you go to McDonald's, you could
grab a Big Mac and be on the turnpike and you've just saved yourself a half an
hour to an hour of time that day. So all the fast foods, what they're really
selling is time shifting. When they did the drive -throughs, it's 86 % of their
business. And in COVID, the Wendy's, McDonald's, and all those places have never done
better business. In fact, the rallies and places like that, and there's McDonald's
that still aren't open up inside 'cause they realized they're making better money by
just the drive -through. and they're really in the time shifting business. That's how
come Blockbusters is gone and Netflix, it's the time of picking up that DVD and
picking it back. So anything that shifts time is valuable. If you've got a CAT
scanner that can do a slice, three slices a second versus one that does one a
second, even if the images are exactly the same, you don't think it's that much
faster, but over a year, that's a lot of patience. But it's interesting because as
much as those are saving time, I feel like in a lot of ways the businesses of
today are in competition just with other things that you do, just end your time.
Like Netflix is in competition with sleep, with your physical activity, with your
work. As much as they're saving time, they're trying to Absorb your time
That's their job is to absorb your time So anything that shifts time if you've got
an NC machine that can crank up parts twice as fast as another and it's 50 % more
expensive It's cheaper right if you're punching out. So you're really paying for time
is a valuable thing Because in reality all of us are finite creatures.
So on the back of your brain You know, that it's like you were to live forever.
You could never ever die. Nobody would ever be in a big rush. 'Cause it wouldn't
matter, you know, it wouldn't matter. So anything that shifts time is very valuable
'cause the most expensive thing that exists is time. Steve Jobs couldn't have bought
one more minute of his life for a billion dollars. All you have is time and it's
limited. And anything that affects your senses, anything that goes in your eyes, your
nose, your ears, your mouth, and gets converted to dopamine and endorphins, that's
sex, drugs, rock and roll. And anything that, why would you go and pay good money
for a meal or go to a concert or listen to music in an elevator as bad as it
is? But anything that affects our senses, 'cause we seek out things. They always
talk about this business thing. If I hear one more time, they say, "What's the pain
point?" Do they miss all the pleasure point? You don't get comfortable seats because
of pain. You'll seek comfort. You'll seek good things. You'll run away from pain.
So do you want to only sell because of the pain point, or do you want to have
things where it's a pleasure point and people feel good about what you've got?
People love music. Why would they sell all those CDs or streaming or all this,
because we're wired for sound. We're wired and it makes dopamine and dolphins. When
you eat a good meal, you go, "Damn, that pizza was rocking," right? So anything
that affects your senses, anything that affects time shifting and anything that
affects ego and pride. Why do you wear the Rolex watch? It's the same time as your
Mickey Mouse Apple watch. Why do you drive the Porsche? 'cause first gives you the
thrill of the speed, saves time, and ego, all rolled into one little piece. And
people will trade one for another. You'll go to a Cedar Point and wait a half an
hour for that damn demon drop, and you're trade time for that thrill. So I present
that most things in life are gonna affect your senses, shift time, or affect ego.
That covers a lot of things when you really peel away, but things are about a
hundred percent, but a lot of things. If it's shifting time, we hang our speakers
and two screws in their home. Everybody else is there for days, rent the scissors,
lifts and stuff here. These the highest they ever goes 10 feet off the ground in a
gym. You could do that from a step ladder. Well, Jeff, we've got to meet. You've
got to come by and visit my lab, because you're going to be
- Oh, I would love that. - This is a cool place. Oh, wait, I can actually zoom out
and see some of this stuff here. - Oh my God. (laughs) - So,
if you look at this place-- - I have to try and describe what just happened for
everyone listening, which was for the entirety of our conversation for the last hour
and a half. It was like a normal zoom where you see someone and They're right on
the other side of the screen. And what Dennis just did is he zoomed out and this
entire conversation. He was like four tables away.
Incredible, incredible. We got all the toys here. We got more toys than Carter's got
liver proves. Actually, when I do zoom, we got a hundred inch screen to watch the
main speaker. So this is this is what our place looks like. Wow. It's a lot of a
lot of cool stuff. cool stuff. It is very cool for those without the visual aid.
Well, Dennis, if folks have anything they would want to follow up with you about
philosophically, audio, or otherwise, what is the best way for them to do so?
My email, and my name's always upside down on my email, so which I don't A -L -T -H
-A -R, audio, A -U -D -I -O, at gmail .com. Author, audio, gmail. And author, audio .com
is the website, author, audio .com. Jeffrey, you gotta come here and break bread.
We'll have a great time. You gotta see a movie in our theater. We've only got 6
,000 DVDs and a few thousand lasers. So, but it's full atmos. It's got the whole
spiel. - I look forward feel it's it's pretty good. Yeah. Well, Dennis, thank you.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. God bless Jeff.