Date & place of birth:
September 8 1945; Birmingham, UK.

Profession:
Managing Director of DiGiCo (is being an MD a profession or a nightmare?)

What was your first professional job in this industry?
Playing in bands from age 15 and shagging in the dressing rooms. I later formed a rental company in 1975 [Texserve] and toured with the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Boomtown Rats, Buzzcocks, Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, Duran Duran, OMD, Tears for Fears, Simply Red and a shed load of others from the punk and New Romantic era. Being an audio guy, it's mandatory to be deaf. Years ago, when I was touring with a band, the office called and told me that Boz Scaggs had been on the phone for a quote; finally the company had made it. I was given an 061 (Manchester) number to call which was confusing until I found out it was the Buzzcocks! Oh well...

What led you to the audio business?
I've always been an audio guy, from building Heathkit amps and pre-amps in the late '50s and playing in bands, to building big, loud PA systems for touring and going deaf. Basically I'm a hairy-arsed audio tosser who managed to resurrect Midas consoles through the '90s for Klark Teknik, drank a lot of vodka and slept with a lot of girls. Can you spot a running theme?

What drove the development of the digital console market?
Every sound engineer knows that if they don't embrace the concept and application of large format live digital mixing and strive to understand the topology of the same, their employment choices may diminish exponentially in the future. And this applies most seriously to the host of analogue engineers in digital denial right now. Before DiGiCo entered the sector, it was only a two-horse digital race, so it follows that the potential to build a worthwhile business was, and is, valid.

What are the learning curves for potential customers?
It's a matter of educating digital console users and owners to understand that important day-to-day preventative maintenance and fault-finding techniques require a different skill set and hardware overview than with analogue consoles. Once this is achieved, the end result with a digital console via the engineer's artistic input and musical knowledge produces, by order of magnitude, a more consistent audio mix from show to show, and allows unlimited manipulation of the audio path.

How does the yin-yang of the Webby & Doyler partnership work?
Webby is probably one of the most creative and innovative marketing men in this industry. He originates all our brochure and technical material in house, and covers many bases day-to-day. But he should cut down on the vodka. Me? I'm just an ex-sound engineer who knows a few people. In my time it was called making friends, however, these days the cool description is networking. And I need to cut down on the vodka, too.

To what do you attribute DiGiCo's meteoric success in touring?
The first priority is to understand your target customer, their needs and aspirations, and create the wherewithal to present an added value solution to them. I believe that there is no psychological or motivational difference between sound engineers from the US or Indonesia Ñ the desire for the same end result is consistent. A meteoric rise can quickly turn into its reciprocal, so let's never rest on our laurels.

Any career aspirations?
I always try to stay at the leading edge of technology and create trends rather than follow them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

What's your all-time Desert Island Disc?
'Reelin' In The Years' by Steely Dan. I was driving around Birmingham when I first heard it on the radio, and I had to pull over because it sounded so fantastic. I could've sworn the DJ said it was Steeleye Span though.

What would be your advice to a teenage Bob Doyle?
Make sure that when you're discussing a digital mixing console with your peers, it's not actually a lighting console.