SLS turns up volume on speaker technology

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Springfield-based SLS Loud-speakers' market share is booming via the development and manufacture of speaker technology. |ret||ret||tab|

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SLS roots|ret||ret||tab|

SLS evolved from a company John Gott started in Springfield 28 years ago. After opening The Rock Shop in the early 70s on The Plaza, with financial help from Bob Money at Hammond Organ Studios, Gott's business enterprises went through various incarnations. In his spare time, Gott was building speakers in his home basement. |ret||ret||tab|

Later Gott sold The Rock Shop and launched Dyna-Might Sound and Light as an equipment rental and "touring system" company, he said.|ret||ret||tab|

Traveling the country in a couple of trucks with three or four other guys, Gott worked concerts for artists like Huey Lewis, Pat Benatar, the Talking Heads, Peter Tosh and George Thoroughgood throughout the 80s. |ret||ret||tab|

In 1990, Gott and Rick Norton, his junior partner since 1986, changed the company's name to Sound and Lighting Specialists. This move shifted the company's focus away from its touring schedule to the design and installation of speaker systems. Their clients included school auditoriums, gymnasiums and churches throughout the Ozarks. |ret||ret||tab|

A division of SLS, Holiday Lights, also built "almost all of the snowflakes in Springfield," as well as the Christmas displays on National Avenue by Phelps Grove Park, Gott said. Holiday Lights also marshaled the force of 35 people working long hours to build the 50-foot, free-standing Christmas tree at Silver Dollar City, he added.|ret||ret||tab|

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SLS now|ret||ret||tab|

Today, however, it is the clear, undistorted reproduction of sound that is the mainstay of SLS's endeavors. With the help of 13 employees in Springfield, a national sales manager in Chicago, and a Russian acoustical physicist who makes his home in Toronto, the company is going nowhere but up. "Sales are ahead of projections and we're experiencing exponential growth," Gott said.|ret||ret||tab|

The company got an additional boost when one of its consultants, Les Garland, co-founder of MTV and VH-1, paired SLS speakers with RMS Networks. RMS is a provider of digital broadcast, full-motion video programming to U.S. retail locations. RMS announced Feb. 20, it will distribute SLS's speakers to its current network outlets, including a planned expansion of "6,000 additional locations," according to a news release. |ret||ret||tab|

"It's huge," Gott said of the deal between SLS and RMS. The total number of RMS locations, including its existing outlets, would near 10,000 if the planned expansion is completed. Each site, according to Gott, would use an average of 10 to 12 speakers. "That's a lot of speakers," he added. |ret||ret||tab|

The retail cost of SLS speakers ranges from $295 for its smallest units to $5,000 for its larger professional speakers. This spring the company will introduce a model at the National Systems Contrac-tor Association that will go for about $7,500, Gott said. |ret||ret||tab|

SLS made an initial public offering in May 2001 and trades as a bulletin board stock under the symbol SITI. Stock revenue is used for research and development and to "fund inventory and receivables," Gott said, "which is the normal growth characteristic of a company."|ret||ret||tab|

SLS manufactures its speaker components and several of its 70 cabinet styles at its 12,000-square-foot Springfield location at 3119-A S. Scenic. It uses additional subcontractors for making cabinetry in Candler, N.C., Los Angeles, Calif. and Ozark. The company is set to add another 15,000 square feet of work space adjacent to its present location, Gott said. Its Web site is located at www.slsloudspeakers.com.|ret||ret||tab|

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The technology|ret||ret||tab|

By making improvements to existing planar ribbon driver, or PRD, technology, SLS has significantly enhanced sound-delivery capability. |ret||ret||tab|

The speakers "handle a lot more heat. They're a lot more efficient. They get extremely loud," said Gott, who is SLS president. They offer a "big dynamic range with very low wattage necessary."|ret||ret||tab|

SLS speakers' high performance is attributable, in part, to the use of extremely light PRD construction materials "so they respond much faster and are more accurate" than other driver technology, Gott said. |ret||ret||tab|

The patent on SLS's PRD has been pending since 2000, and it is set to be finalized in October. |ret||ret||tab|

"We're waiting to the last minute because as soon as your patent is issued, then the whole world can read your technology," Gott said. The patent process delays, for now, another company's us-ing SLS technology and "deciding if there's something they want to do to make it different," he said.|ret||ret||tab|

The company manufactures two models of the planar ribbon driver, utilizing proprietary technology developed in large measure by Tom Harrison, head of SLS engineering. |ret||ret||tab|

The SLS device is a layered arrangement comprising an extremely thin dia-phragm secured by a series of large Neo-dymium magnets bonded to carbon steel plating and housed in an external casing of cast aluminum, according to SLS specification materials. |ret||ret||tab|

The diaphragm, a Dupont product, has a "chemically etched aluminum conductor pattern that serves as a voice coil element" according to SLS. The passage of electrical current through this conductor vibrates the diaphragm, radiating sound through the openings of the PRD's magnetic structure.|ret||ret||tab|

Then end result has found wide favor with critical audiophiles and recording professionals on an increasing scale. NBC referenced the sound portion of its Olympic coverage through an SLS loudspeaker system. "They chose our speakers to use for the final broadcast and the final (quality control)," Gott said. |ret||ret||tab|

Similarly, "Phillips and Sony have endorsed our products, and they're using them in their engineering," Gott said. They are being employed particularly in Phillips' "recording studios and for dealer demonstrations of the new Phil-lips/Sony, SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc) technology," an SLS news release added. [[In-content Ad]]