"I grew up in a musical family, my Mom was a church organist. She was back in church playing a week after I was born; she's still playing today and she's 84. At high school I did drama and worked on school productions, and some musicals. I became a music history major but soon became interested in recording; recitals, that sort of thing. I was advised to go the Belmont where the college specialized in the more technical side of music: the fact was I hated music history and to be honest there didn't seem to be much future in it, whereas there was a career path in recording."
He took the advice and has no regrets, "I'd just turned 24 when I left college. I'd begun studying for a Music degree, I thought I wanted to do recording work, but ended up studying Music Business. That meant along with learning all about stuff like copyright law, I did business finance, sales and marketing." Ask him today on the differences between Hedge Fund Managers, Venture Capitalist and Private Equity Investors and he will succinctly dissect the subtle differences.
"I didn't know how I'd use the knowledge at the time, but I knew that it could be useful in the future. When I started at Belmont University I was already doing studio stuff and somehow that led to me being asked to do live sound on a little tour for some band or other. In fact, naming no names, the audio provider had already made such a mess of it that they lost the tour." Readers will soon see that Porter has no truck with bad mouthing other operators, "better to keep your eyes on your own business than beef about other peoples," he said. "But what I realized was how awful the equipment was on the rental side. By the time I married in '78 I'd scraped together $2,400 and bought my first PA equipment. I got hold of some used Sun two by 15" bins, some SFW Horns, and QSE1400 amps. I designed and built my own 15" horn and monitor cabinet, and compared to what was around locally it did the job."
Porter's insight into live sound mixing at that time is instructive. "I played timpani in the high school orchestra, and timps tuned my ear. I have special sensitivity in those raspy high end frequencies, the sort of area where the machinery of the drum can rattle the intonation of the instrument. That has proved a useful asset in my career in sound reinforcement. It also taught me about the amount of application you have to invest to get a good sound, tuning those big drums makes you aware of how many variables are involved in the process of achieving good sound."
So Spectrum started life in that buccaneering era, most of the nascent PA rental companies that grew up in the seventies were started by live sound believers like Porter; enthusiasts who thought they knew everything about sound and didn't much care about the business side. Porter by contrast, was that rarest of commodities, a live sound aficionado, yet with a mind already educated for business.
"We all went through that 'build your own system' thing, but I had seen the changes coming and by 1982 I'd purchased my first independently manufactured system, the Turbosound TMS3." While many a soun
