Cranborne Audio - Behind The Brand

Hello and welcome to the sound on sound podcast, which is in our people and music industry channel. I'm Hugh Robjohns. I'm the technical editor of sound on sound. And today I'm talking with Sean Karpovitz, who's the managing director of Cranbourne audio. It's a relatively new British pro audio manufacturer, and it launched its first product, which was the Camden 500 preamp just a couple of years ago at NAMM in 2018. So, hello, Sean. Nice to talk to you. Sean Karpowicz Hello, Hugh. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Um, I should point out for our listeners that, um, with social distancing and shielding and all that stuff, which is still in force, you're in your offices, which I think are in Potter's Bar, aren't they, on northern outskirts of London? We are indeed, yes, on Cranbourne Road in the Cranbourne Industrial State. And I'm in my home studio here in Worcester. So, the wonders of technology are letting us talk without actually seeing each other. Amazing, isn't it, Hugh? You know? So, uh, perhaps we should start with a quick rundown, then, of where Cranbourne Audio began and the people who were behind it all. Right, yeah. So, um, the four founding members of Cranbourne Audio are, uh, me, uh, Sean Karpowicz, um, Edward Holmes, who's our mad genius director of R& D, Elliot Thomas, who's our product manager, and Andrew Pat, Andy Pat, who is our creative director. So, um, us four met. Just right next to our building here, in the Cranbourne House, in the Cranbourne Industrial State, on Cranbourne Road, here in Potter's Bar, when we were all working at Soundcraft together, in, uh, 2013. Okay, you don't sound like you come from these parts. Uh, I don't know what you mean, Hugh, no, uh, no, of course not, it is not the new London accent, although I do live in London since 2013, I married English, and, uh, decided to settle in the UK because, You know, with what, the great weather and all the fantastic, uh, food, why would I not move to the UK, you know? So, which part of America are you from? Originally from New Jersey, yeah. So just outside New York City, I was very spoiled to grow up where I did, thanks to all the amazing studios, all the amazing music that we had at our disposal. Yet, in the outskirts, so a little less crammed and a little more cleaner air to breathe. Okay, so your background's not in manufacturing as such then? Well, uh, no, actually. So, um, yeah, oddly enough, my, my university degree is actually in history, political science, and journalism, so nothing at all to do with what we're, with what I do now, um, but, uh, my dad was, uh, he was an electrician, uh, and, um, I, it all started with guitar amps. I wanted to build my own guitar amp and stuff when I was a teenager, and my dad helped me, and, uh, that kind of fermented my love for, um, Uh, for electronics and audio electronics specifically and, you know, the appreciation for craftsmanship and, uh, and, and how to, you know, make really nice equipment. Excellent. Okay. So, I, I gather the whole team are musicians, actually. Yeah, well, certainly me and Elliot are. Um, Ed, Ed's learning, uh, Ed's background is actually quite fascinating. Um, uh, he, he now plays guitar, but Ed was never really a music type. Unlike most of the electronics engineers and, and audio designers in our industry. Most of whom are, you know, usually musicians and audio guys, uh, as an example, you know, Graham Blythe, the co founder of Soundcraft, who's, you know, one of our great heroes, we love Graham, uh, and he was in fact, um, Ed's kind of mentor, uh, Graham kind of took Ed on as his protégé when, when Ed was at Soundcraft, and, uh, you know, Graham is an unbelievable organist and concert pianist, and that's how he got into audio electronics. Well, Ed is quite anachronistic in, in that he's, he's a physicist, he's a, he's a, an engineer. That got into audio for the fascination of technology and the electronics. So, a little different than your typical audio designer in that respect. Um, and, uh, and then Andy Pat, he's, uh, he's just a brilliant, um, you know, he just loves branding and visual aesthetics and stuff like that. Uh, and he was drawn to audio by just the quirky nature of industry. There's not many industries that have the sort of passion. That, uh, that our industry has, and that's what Andy Pat really loves about, about what we do is just how passionate our user base is. Okay, that's fascinating. So you all, you all met up at Soundcraft, you all came from that company, what made you take the step into independence? Yeah, well, uh, it wasn't, uh, exactly our choice. Um, Um, Unfortunately, both Andy Pat and Elliot were made redundant at Harmon when the Apartheid Bar Office was closed. And, um, Ed and I, we fortunately still had our jobs, but without the wider team and without the, um, Without the focus and everyone on the same page, you know, then it just made it kind of difficult for us To be able to do the sorts of products that we wanted to do And especially without Elliot and Andy, you know We formed quite a nice little team at Soundcraft and you know Taking a couple of those guys away is like removing an arm or removing a leg It just it's it doesn't quite work the same way after you do that So, um shortly thereafter gave my notice because I realized what the situation was I knew I couldn't do what I wanted to do Unfortunately, given the changes at Harmon, so, uh, we, Ed and I both resigned as well after the redundancies of the Pottage Bar office. Right. So, but, uh, we loved our time at Soundcraft. I mean, uh, part of the reason why we named the company Cramhorn Audio is because it was an homage to the spirit and the work atmosphere that we had there. Um, we just had a fantastic time working together and, you know, at Soundcraft there were just loads of Immensely knowledgeable people that have been working on audio circuits for 30 years and the amount of knowledge in that building was just absolutely unbelievable and we were all like sponges, quite honestly, um, you know, just just taking in as much knowledge as possible and really just absolutely enjoying designing audio products. But it was a difficult thing because other people got involved and other people who didn't have the same values that we had in the same. Dedication to doing things the right way, quote unquote, that we wanted to do them. So, um, when we all left, uh, and, and went our separate ways, you know, I, I, I really missed it. Uh, as did Ed, as did Elliot, as did Andy, and I just thought, you know what guys, we can do this. You know, we have loads of ideas, we work brilliantly together. We can make this happen. We can find a way. And so we just did. We just got together, called the guys to my house. I just chatted through some of my ideas for a brand for how we could do this and some products that I thought would be really cool. And the guys were just all in. And they're like, Absolutely, we'd love to. And, uh, and so we just head down and got on with it. Fantastic. How do you fund a business like that? I'm obviously just the four of you getting together and coming up with ideas. That's not expensive. But when you go into production, that's a big outlay to get products Into a, you know, a finished state that you can sell to people. How do you fund something like that? It's a great point, Hugh, honestly. That's really the crux of it. Hardware is really difficult because hardware is just so costly. You have startup expenses like tooling and things like that. And every prototype, when you're doing small runs, is very expensive to assemble and to make. So you have to purchase all the material for your big production batch up front. So you need a lot of money to do that. So yeah, once we had something tangible that we knew was real and performed like we expected it would, uh, we brought that to, uh, various investors to show off what we could do and, and to give them an idea of our vision for what Cranbourne Audio could be. And we were very fortunate to get some people that really believed in us and, and really bought into our ideas. And, and they're phenomenal people and we're so thankful for them. And they, and they still stand behind us today, which is just, it's, it's an amazing feeling to be believed in and to have people that have your back. It's, it's really the thing that made Cranbourne possible. It's a nice story. That's good to hear. Yeah, it's nice to know that these things, there are people like that in the world, you know. Exactly that. Yeah, exactly that. People that can recognize the value of quality rather than just, you know, the profit margin. Quite well said. Exactly right. Exactly. Okay, so we've got an idea of your values here. We know that you value quality and you want to make products that people can really use and will fit in with what they do. So, you started off with a preamplifier. What made you choose that as your first product? Yeah, good question. So, I mean, the reason why we started off with the Canon 500 with the preamp was, quite frankly, we had been doing so much work on preamps at Soundcraft, um, you know, we were focused on delivering things like, uh, upgraded VI series preamp, you know, the, the ghost preamps, the, that were put in the signature series consoles, uh, you know, we did a lot of these sorts of things, and because we worked on a lot of different sorts of preamps, Ed specifically got a lot of ideas on, oh, okay, this topology has this advantage. This topology has that advantage. I like how this sounds. You like how this sounds. This, this is punchier. This is more dynamic. This gives more linear frequency response, so on and so forth. So we had just been exposed and worked on so many preamps that we just were percolating with ideas for preamps and what, what could be a better quote unquote preamp. And, uh, and I mean, I know you're, you love. Preamps you but the cool thing about preamps is it's it's actually one of the more difficult things to make quite frankly, uh, with the with the voltages that you're dealing with the very weak signal that you get from a microphone and how low noise and how much gain you need to add. I mean, a preamp is very difficult to make, um, and we thought we could do something that was really quite special and we thought that was quite a good statement to make, you know, you know, it's. Maybe the cleanest, most, most transparent preamp in existence was also being the most characterful. It's quite a nice story, quite a nice statement as your first product is. That's really why we wanted to start with the Kanda 500. Okay, that's a good point because you know, a lot of people would have gone out there and just made a clone of a 1073 or an API or, you know, something that people would recognize. But you didn't do that. You went out and built what is, as you say, probably one of the cleanest. Uh, nicest preamp that there's around at the moment. Mm. But then you came up with this mojo idea, Mm. which makes it all manner of different kinds of preamp. Mm. All at the same time. Mm. Was, was that the idea from the outset? Did this mojo thing, was that in the back of your mind when you started, or did that come along later? Yeah, so it was actually in the front of my mind. I think the, the, the Opus Miranda I, I put forth to the team when we were designing the Camden is, We want the cleanest, most phase linear. Uh, I think, I think phase linearity is actually a really underrated thing when you're talking about preamps. It makes a massive difference, uh, to, to the sound. It's just much clearer, much more natural, much punchier. So I really wanted a very clean front end and phase and frequency linear front end. Mm hmm. Um, so, that was from my experience as an audio engineer previously, but at the same time, as I was explaining, sometimes there are those moments where you actually want that vintage character. So you have this really clean front end, with this variable saturation that you can add in, but doesn't have all the downsides of that normally, so It was really, it was a lot of experimentation to answer your question, Hugh. So, we, we tried a lot of things and we, we let our audio analysis equipment and our ears, uh, do, do the talking. You know, we didn't make a lot of assumptions. We just wanted to test and understand how good would this sound. And, and, um, and the result of the, uh, of Ed's design work and our tuning and all the rest of it is the, is the Canvas 500. Uh, and, and that perfectly variable saturation circuit, but completely bypassable as well. Yeah, it's, it's a really nice. It's really nice, uh, preamp. It was, when I reviewed it back in, I think it was September 2018, wasn't it? Somewhere around there. Mm, yeah, yeah. You were the first, uh, industry reviewer in the world to, to hear the Cayman 500. Oh, well, there you go. There's a, there's a privilege. Really, really, really taken with it. It's, uh, it's a very impressive thing. Oh, thanks to you. Well, it's the versatility of it. That's the, that's the big advantage. Exactly, yeah. And now you've just, uh, repackaged it into a rack mounting form. Uh, in the EC2, which I actually have on my desk in front of me now as we speak. I heard that you might be reviewing the EC2. I will indeed, and of course that review will be out by the time this podcast hits the airwaves. Oh, very nice. But again, sort of sticking in your innovative way of things, it's not just a preamp, it's a preamp with built in headphone monitoring that's very versatile and flexible as well. Yeah, I think, you know, it's, it's, there's so many things we can say about Craneborn and what our values are. What I'd say about products is we always start from the application side. Especially Ellie and I, we record a lot, we play a lot of music, um, and, uh, we just, We'd know what helps we could because we do it all the time. We just we know the things that make a difference. Um, so one of the things that's a no brainer for me is just You know, when, when's the last time you, you tracked somebody, but didn't need to provide them a headphone mix, you know, and by the same token, when was the last time you did mic placement and stuff like that? And you didn't want to hear it as you were, you know, adjusting things in the tracking room or in the live room or whatnot. So it's just, I think it's from our experience of actually using equipment, um, and applying that knowledge and, and just asking questions, you know, we can. Just, just that assumption of, well, why is it done that way? It can be done better. Why, why hasn't this been done this way before? And, uh, it's a, it's a slightly different approach. And I, and I think it's that approach that really lends itself well to our product design and our concepts. Hmm. It is, it's quite innovative. I think I was, I was looking around when I was reviewing this EC2 to think, well, how many other preamps have headphone amps in? And, and there are a few, there's a couple of them. Recently, yeah. I think, I think some people might have taken notice. But so many of them don't have the external input, so although you could monitor what the microphone's doing, you can't listen to a cue track coming in. So, it doesn't really work as a, as a monitoring system. Exactly, exactly. And, and one of the things I always found is that, you know, I've been in a lot of recording studios. And, you know, you'd see racks of some of the most gorgeous equipment you can, you can imagine, you know. But one of the things I've always noticed is the headphone amps are always Not on par with the rest of the equipment. It's usually an afterthought, you know It's just cheap and cheerful headphone amps bunged in the rack and whatever. It's good good enough Headphone amps to me, especially when you're tracking you want to hear every single detail if there's snare resonance Or if there's a nasty harsh frequency on a guitar, I want to hear it I want to be able to pick that out and if you're using substandard headphone amps that you know, won't reveal those sorts of things, you know, it's going to affect your recordings. Yeah. So for us, it just made perfect sense to, uh, think of it as an almost a studio front end. It's the, it's your window both in and out of your recordings. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Tell me about the other two products that you currently have your 500 racks. What's the thinking behind those? Yeah, so, um, you know, I love the 500 series format. I think it's a brilliant format. What's great about it is the options, of course. You know, um, I don't even know how many 500 series modules exist. Upwards of 500, 600? Something like that? I think so, yeah. Yeah, and there's no, I mean, there's no other format like it that has that. Um, in my younger days, I was a guitarist by trade and, uh, of course, you have the pedal board syndrome, you know, a little bit of that Pokemon collect them all kind of, uh, mindset and, uh, 500 series has that sort of appeal. But the thing about 500 series is it requires a lot of equipment to make it happen, you know, um. Of course, everyone's going to be using a D. W. So you already need an interface. You probably need a monitor controller. You probably need, you know, headphone amps. Uh, there's a lot of equipment that you need, and they're all individual boxes. And then, you know, each one of those boxes is A metal chassis and a power supply inside of it and and stuff like that and all those things add up um, so the concept with the 500ra and the 500adat is Rather than having five boxes with five power supplies and all this cabling just put it all into one box And I mean everyone's going to need an interface with their 500 series rack Everyone is going to basically need a monitor controller to to listen to it. So Just put it all in one box, one power supply, one box, and then pass that saving on to people. Uh, and, and you have the extra advantage of this very cute, very portable format. Uh, and maybe that's something we actually underestimated is how many people really love a mobile recording setup. A lot of people will just hop on a plane to, to go to a writing session. And then this way you have your sound, you have your channel strip with you, uh, wherever you go, your sound. It's quite a cool, powerful thing. And, and that's what I think I love about the 500 series. And our two racks more than anything is every customer's, uh, 500 series of rack. They're from an array. Their primary that is a mark of their character and of their style and of who they are. And, and, you know, their tone choices and whatnot, and, uh, embracing that, embracing that individual creativity. That's what music is, isn't it? I mean, that's what art is. It's, it's a way of expressing your personality. And that's just a very beautiful aspect of the 500 series rack that we really wanted to embrace and try to facilitate with the primary and the primary data. Excellent. You mentioned that, with the possible exception of yourself, and we'll accept that you're an adopted Brit now, the whole team is British. By the way, thank you very much, Hugh. That's one of the kindest things anyone's ever said. With your manufacturing, is that done in the UK, or do you ship that out to the Far East? The thing, one of the things with your products is, not only are they extraordinarily good quality, but they're actually very good value for money as well. Thanks for highlighting that, Hugh. Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things we wanted to do was we just, we wanted to give People who feel like we do give them a chance to get that really desirable sound. Um, and the thing is, in order to do that, it's very challenging. It's, it's, it's extremely challenging, you know, and especially making in the U. K. And, and doing that is, is very difficult. So, uh, you're right, for the moment, we do make, uh, The three products, 500R8, 500ADAT, and Camden 500 in the UK, but interestingly, we are about to move actually to a world class manufacturing, uh, facility, um, that is not in the UK, um, now, the reason why we originally made in the UK, was that we wanted to control everything. Um, well, fortunately, thanks to our network, we had a UK manufacturer who was willing to work with us and it was just down the road from us in Dunstable in Bedfordshire and, uh, you know, when we were making our our first production runs, you know, all of us were in the factory making sure that everything was going together correctly, there were no issues just because we wanted to control things. We wanted to make sure everything going out the door was absolute top quality, and we could really only do that with our budget in the UK. Um, but the thing is now that we're getting to a point where we're having a little bit of success, we're, we're, we're selling a good amount of product, and, and we're establishing a reputation for ourselves, there are new doors opening for us. So, I'm very excited that, uh, uh, actually the EC2 that you have is one of the first. first products coming out of our new manufacturing facility. Now, it just so happens to be in the Far East, but really what's more important than geography or, or country where it appears is what is the capability of that manufacturer? You know, what quality can they achieve? And, you know, we made it work before in the UK, uh, because we were there all the time and we had our finger on it and we could do it. But now we're moving to a partner who is, you know, they're the type of people that make the stuff that you get in electronic stores. You know, this, we're talking about a quality level. That is. You know, absolute world class. And whilst we were happy with our quality in the UK, um, you know, this is a class above quite honestly. And what's nice is we're passing those savings onto the customer. Um, if there are any savings in a lot of cases there aren't because to go to a better manufacturer, it costs more money. Um, but we want to put as much as possible into the product quality. We want to get all of our products as absolutely perfect as we possibly can. And, uh, but also at a reasonable price and that's the really tricky part to do. Yeah. Yeah. How do you maintain, uh, The quality when you can't see it. I mean, when it's in the UK, you can make absolutely sure that the components are the components you want and not some kind of cheaper alternative, um, and all the sort of quality control product testing stuff you can keep an eye on when it's in the UK. How do you do that when it's in a different factory in a different part of the world? Absolutely. You know, absolutely. Exactly right. And that's what makes a world class manufacturing company, a world class manufacturing company. There's, there's a lot of traceability techniques and, uh, and oversight and auditing that these sorts of manufacturers do. Uh, right now I can send an email to the To our manufacturer and say, Hey, I'd like a full traceability report on all products between these serial numbers. And it's just a report that they export. Um, whereas in the UK, we didn't have that sort of thing. We had to visit the factory and see it with our own two eyes, which is the old school way, which is lovely. There's something really nice about that. But these modern kind of world class manufacturing facilities, they have such. Immense oversight on their operation and everything is so you know It's a very efficient machine and the way that they do it is absolutely unbelievable quite frankly here It's just it's really quite something honestly I didn't think we would be able to get a world class manufacturer like this anytime soon I thought we'd have to grow the company for a few more years and get a lot more business before we'd be able to do this. But I think, you know, our reputation for quality and whatnot, you know, turns on a lot of world class manufacturers. They want to be associated with the best products, so people want to work with us. It's a it's a fantastic position to be in. I can tell you're enthusiastic about it. Presumably, if you're manufacturing abroad, there's a greater time lag from when you say. You know, start production to when a container full of boxes comes back to you. Is that a significant time lag? Yeah, it's a huge, it's a huge aspect to consider. And that actually is one of the reasons why we didn't do this move sooner. Um, you know, you have to pay for parts up front. You know, when those units dispatch to factory, you have to pay for them. Well, if they have 40, 50 days to reach the UK, that's just That's hundreds of thousands of pounds on on the water. Uh, so yeah cash flow and and funding this sort of move That was a really important bit to consider that we had to get right We have a lot more what they call working capital in our supply chain now in in manufacturing goods Uh than we had previously we were a lot leaner before when we were in the uk. We were a lot more nimble now we have We have to buy a lot more product. We have to plan far more in advance. But it's actually really nice, uh, doing it that way. You know, it's less firefighting. It's more planning. Yes. Yeah. And when it works, it goes much smoother, actually. And what about protecting your intellectual property? Because it's moved out of your control to a degree now. Is that a concern of yours? Um, well, no, it's not. So, uh, we don't release any schematics. Full stop. Um, schematics are the key IP that we have. Um, when we use a manufacturer, we have to provide a bill of materials, which is just what parts we use. Uh, and we have to provide like the layout and the mechanical files, but that doesn't tell you anything. Um, you know, that doesn't like, you wouldn't understand how the Camden works just thought based off the Gerbers and the bill of materials. Um, you would have absolutely no idea and if you change one component on the can, then forget it. The whole thing breaks. So, um, it's uh, we still have control of the IP, but you're absolutely right. It's a risk. Um, a lot of people like to patent things. We're not too keen on patenting for various reasons. First of all, it's very costly to patent things. And secondly, the patents only as good as the country where it's patented in. Uh, and if you're, um, if, if there are countries that don't really honor patents, Um, then, you know, the patent's not even worth the paper it's written on, unfortunately. And you've got to give everything away to do the patent in the first place, haven't you? You have to make the information public, so. Precisely. Exactly. You have to, in fact, in order for a patent to be defensible, you have to be very specific. You really have to share. You know, really all your design secrets in order for it to be protected. And then, you know, if they're not willing to grant you the protection, all you did was just do all the reverse engineering work for them in your patent. So, uh, we don't really think of patents as a way of, of, uh, of securing IP. One thing we do do is we do design registrations, um, and trademarks. Right. So. We are, all our products are design registered, uh, in the country where they're manufactured. Um, and of course we have global trademarks. So we have trademarks in the EU, in the UK, in the US. Uh, and so even if somebody were to copy one of our boxes, if it says Cranbourne Audio on it or if it says Camden on it, they're not going to have, uh, uh, much of a market to sell their counterfeit products to. Yeah. Um, so. The EC2, the first product you've manufactured abroad, obviously you finished all the files for that some time ago. So, uh, you've had some time to work on some new stuff since then. What can you tell me about what new stuff you're working on? Oh, well, um, well, obviously, uh, being that our background is from Soundcraft, the first question we usually get, they go, Alright guys, so when are you making the mixer? Mm hmm. Uh, that's a good question. Um, so, what I'd say is before you have to make a mixer, you have to make a full channel strip, don't you? You know, uh, um, and so far we only have a preamp, so, uh, you can imagine what's probably coming down the pike soon. Hugh, are you, are you going to carry on with the 500 series approach? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, we, we love the 500 series format. API really deserves a lot of credit for, for opening up the standard and for allowing people to do that. Um, so absolutely. We'll, we'll, I would say any analog processor that we make, it would have a rack mount format and a 500 series format for sure. And what about expanding the company? Do you have plans to take on more staff? Will you need to take on more staff as your sales expand? Actually, us four are the four founding members, but we're actually up ten members of our team now. Much bigger than I thought. More than half are engineers though, Hugh, so our focus really is R& D. You know, we, we are an R and D led company. We want our innovations, our product design to lead the way and to speak for us. You know, as a startup, as a young company, you have really have to prioritize and where, where we spend our money is where we think it counts most on the products, you know, getting the products to be as good as they possibly can, both in the performance, but also in the quality and the service, you know, the, the fewer, uh, issues you have with your products, the more profitable your company will be. Um, so we just, we make sure we. Uh, invest in people like really good production engineers, mechanical engineers, electronics engineers, software engineers, people who will make the difference on the product, both to make it more desirable, but also make it. Superior in terms of the, uh, the yields and the quality which will improve our profitability long term by not having service issues and whatnot. If we have money to spend on more staff, we want more engineers. Always more engineers, more engineers. That's, that's where we want to spend our money. I like this. Better than buying in lots of accountants, that's for sure. Indeed. So if you have one wish, if there was a magic fairy came along and said, I'll grant you one wish, what would you wish for to, to move the company on? Ooh, well, uh, I mean, it's, uh, I mean, money does fix a lot of things, quite frankly, Hugh. Uh, um, no, you know what? If I could wish for anything, I would just wish for our team that we've established to just continue to be healthy, continue to grow. Uh, hopefully no more global pandemics to put everything at risk. I mean, I'm really confident that we're, we're on a, on a path to do exactly what we set out to do, which is hopefully revolutionize the project studios, really what we want to do. Um, and, uh, I, I really believe that we're doing it. It's just, as long as things outside of our control, like global pandemics don't derail us, I think, I think we're on our way. Long may your enthusiasms continue, and I look forward to seeing what, uh, whatever products you come up with next. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure talking to you, Sean. Pleasure is mine, Hugh. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for listening. Please check out the show notes page for this episode, where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all the other episodes. And lastly, please check out the soundonsound. com forward slash podcast website page to explore what's available on all our other channels.