OTHER TECH

"The Mythos Supertower, or ST, is our first Mythos tower with a built-in sub. It's 3 inches taller, 3 inches deeper, and half an inch wider than our Mythos One tower, so it's very sleek and sexy. Its sub offers performance equivalent to our SuperCube One. The ST addresses the desire of people attracted to our Mythos products who want to get subwoofer boxes up off the floor and make them disappear."

What was your first reaction when flat-panel TVs caught on and people want speakers that would go with them? It's interesting - the sales of our SuperTowers have increased dramatically over the last 5 years, so people still want freestanding speakers. But we evolved our Mythos line to offer a high-performance speaker that would go with the high-tech look of flat-panel TVs - in fact, we basically defined the concept of the "plasma speaker" with that line. A major focus in our industry over the last 10 years has been on hiding everything, which I feel is a shame. In the modern home, a lot of the appliances, like Viking ranges in the kitchen, are high-end accoutrements that people like to show off. So we created the Mythos line to address that. We have smaller speakers with stands so they can go on the furniture when a flat-panel TV is on a stand, but we also have several tower models that look very attractive when placed next to TVs on the wall or in dedicated furniture.

What do you see for the industry 5 or 10 years from now? The biggest trend developing right now is distributing sound around the home. I hope the technology for doing that develops in such a way that it doesn't degrade the sound quality of what people are listening to. The major focus is on distributing program material over the Internet and storing it at home in a way that's very different from what's gone on until now. Another issue the whole industry is facing - and it goes well beyond just the audio industry - is the problems of the recorded-music industry. A good friend of mine, David Chesky, speaks to me often about what's going on with downloading. It's become financially difficult for record companies to be viable, especially with less than mainstream material, and now we're seeing the closing of Tower Records. At a record store, you can go and browse through racks of CDs - not even in esoteric areas, but just jazz or classical music - and see things you hadn't thought of and then walk home with them. All of this is becoming homogenized, and that's a major issue.

How big a market is there for serious music listening? The market continues to be large. The research that I've seen suggests that baby boomers, who helped create the audio industry as we know it in the '60s and '70s, have a desire to get re-involved with serious listening. This is something that will continue to make our industry vital and healthy.

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