|
|
|
Minutes of the July 18, 2004
Atlanta Audio Society Meeting.
Field Trip to SMART Devices
This meeting was held at the offices and manufacturing
center of SMART Devices, Inc. of Norcross, Ga. Our host
was Norm Schneider, president of the company. Norm founded
SMART Devices 26 years ago after a long career in professional
audio. SMART continues going strong and is adaptable during
the up's, downturns, and technology changes affecting
his market sector. The company specializes in professional
equipment for movie theaters; it's core business. SMART
is one of the largest businesses of its type with offices
and outlets around the globe, including Australia. However,
SMART has expanded into home audio including two power
amplifiers, line purifiers, a rear center surround adapter,
and serving as marketing agents for the ELP Laser Turntable
and Loricraft Record Cleaner.
Norm first gave us a brief history of SMART, describing
that the main design criteria for movie theater professional
gear is reliability with at least 10 or more years of
trouble free service for the client. The exhibitor of
feature films does not want equipment failures with a
house full of patrons. That reliability is also built
into their home audio products. He decided to enter the
home audio market a few years ago when major movie theater
chains were “downsizing” leaving a lot of
used (but nearly new) professional movie theater gear
to flood the market, thus slowing his company’s
sales in that sector.
Norm then went into describing in more detail the ELP
Laser Turntable from Japan. Yes, this product actually
uses adjustable lasers (three of them) to read the record
grooves (without touching them) directly, all in analog
mode. The lasers may be directed to the least damaged
part of the grooves to acquire the cleanest sound. The
ELP auto-identifies the track breaks (with mini-display)
with controls similar to a CD player. The ELP is hand
built to order in Japan, and is especially useful for
archiving old recordings that any other turntable could
damage while playing. It is rather expensive (from about
$10,000 to $13,500 depending model, type and variety of
record diameters it is required to play). Over $20 million
was spent on its development. The ELP may be specified
with an unequalized phono level output (for use with your
favorite preamp) or a line level output for line stage
preamps, outputs are single-ended.
We then spent some time listening to the turntable and
immediately discovered that it is very sensitive and "reads"
all those “clicks and pops”. That led us into
the next product SMART markets, the Loricraft Audio Record
Cleaning System from England. The Loricraft is a liquid
record cleaning system, which is very effective in cleaning
records. It uses a quiet vacuum and moving arm riding
on a thread to pass over the record in a couple of minutes
removing the hand applied cleaning fluids. Unlike the
VPI's and Nitty Gritty machines, the Loricraft cleans
a very small sector of the surface as the record is rotated.
SMART also markets cleaning fluids for records and other
products including one that removes mold (stamper) release
compound and another product by "Buggtussle"
that neutralizes bacteria and fungus on the record surface.
After cleaning the demo record, there was a lot less noise
than before, although the lasers still picked some up.
Further cleaning and use of the built-in noise blanker,
which we had turned off, should help with this. The ELP
will also play "broken" or cracked records that
have been carefully rejoined, something no mechanical
stylus will ever do, quite remarkable indeed!
Norm then went into brief explanations of some of their
other products, line conditioners (they call them line
purifiers) and a (rear) center surround adapter called
CS-3X. Why not EX (like in Dolby EX)? It turns out that
EX had never been trademarked, so SMART and Dolby negotiated
a settlement to allow EX to be used by Dolby instead of
SMART. Norm also showed us their two power amps based
on the Hafler DH-200 design of years past, but updated
and upgraded. There are two models available, the 2X150VT
which is a hybrid tube/MOSFET amp, and the 2X150, the
same amp but without the tube “front end”.
After a short break, it was time for Norm to show us around
the factory. We saw the labs where engineers develop new
products and tested existing ones for quality. We saw
where new products were built, and an extensive warehouse
of raw parts. SMART performs it's own transformer winding
(Toroid and E-I core, 2000 VA or greater), silk screening,
circuit board assembly among other manufacturing functions
at a variety of work stations. We also saw the service
department and a fascinating display of restored and operational
vintage radios, tape recorders (including wire recorders)
and microphones that Norm has collected over the years
in a conference room display case.
A very interesting meeting and our sincere appreciation
to Norm Schneider, a most gracious and knowledgeable host
indeed!
Respectfully Submitted,
Thomas Horner
Secretary, AAS
and
Chuck Bruce - President AAS.
|
|
|
Copyright© 2004- 2006, Atlanta Audio
Society, all rights reserved.
Web master: Steven Holz
|
|
|
|
