John Oakley
Date & place of birth:
Profession:
What was your first professional job?:
How did you end up in your current position at Midas & Klark Teknik?
What can the marketplace expect from Midas and Klark Teknik over the next 12 months?
Midas is regarded as the ultimate analogue control brand. Is the company confident that it will excel equally in the digital domain?
Can you suggest ways in which the major technology exhibitions could be improved to offer better value for exhibitors and visitors?
What were the last additions to your record collection?
The last live show you attended as a punter?
Any hobbies away from the job?
If you were to meet up with the teenage John Oakley, what advice would you give him?
July 23 1950; Manchester, UK.
Managing Director of Midas & Klark Teknik.
After my engineering degree from Imperial College London I headed straight to the BBC. I was part of the team that designed the world's first digital audio distribution network which served all of the BBC's national radio stations. They were still using it 20 years later.
Well, 12 years' experience with other mixer manufacturers within the Harman Group certainly stood me in good stead for this position, and when the opportunity arose to take up the reins here at Midas and Klark Teknik, I was delighted to oblige. Live sound was always my first love, so the chance to get back to my roots with the world's premier brands in the live audio production arena was not one to be missed.
I think the recent launches of the Heritage 4000 at PLASA and the Verona console at NAMM are pretty good indicators; we are continuing to focus strongly on the analogue marketplace as it remains our core market, and demand is still huge. However, we are of course working in parallel on the development of our digital console.
As far as KT is concerned, we've obviously seen more digital than analogue innovation of late, but we are by no means abandoning the development of analogue products. We intend to continue dual development paths for both brands for some time to come.
Firstly, we have the advantage of seeing how other manufacturers have approached the marketplace which helps us to avoid any obvious pitfalls. Secondly, we've deliberately taken our time in R&D because we want to be sure that the console we deliver not only meets the business requirements of our customer base, but it's also got to sound as good as an XL4.
So we've recruited a crack team of digital console designers who between them boast some 250 man years of experience in the digital audio domain. We're taking this very seriously, and while we may not have been the first company to launch a digital desk, we are trying very hard to make sure that when we do, in keeping with our analogue tradition, it'll be the best the market has to offer.
I think that rationalisation is the key. There are too many exhibitions with too much overlap for manufacturers to be able to exhibit at them all, and exhibition space is so punitively expensive that it can be difficult to do your products justice, especially if they take up a lot of room as ours tend to do!
The Stones' 40 Licks and Norah Jones' Come Away With Me.
The Stones on their Licks tour, hence the CD!
Work, a wife, four children, two dogs and a crumbling farmhouse in the middle of nowhere seem to make effective use of any spare time I might have envisaged!
I spent the sixties as an anorak-clad electronics geek with my head in a disco mixer, but in retrospect I'm sure there was more fun to be had elsewhere! Consequently my advice would be,.. "Get out and get a life!"' Disco mixers can wait.