SCN: How long have you been with Peavey, and what are your responsibilities?
Courtland Gray: I’ve been working at Peavey for 24 years. I started in our finance division. I became more involved with various parts of the business as time went on, and have served as COO, CFO, and since our legendary founder, Hartley Peavey, has referred to me as CEO in a few emails to people, I claim that now as well. The responsibilities are broad and wide, covering both our Commercial Audio division and the musical instrument side of the business.
SCN: Last year, Peavey celebrated its 60th anniversary. How has the company been celebrating?
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CG: From a product viewpoint, we have brought back several classic Peavey guitar amps from over the years and put them into a pedal preamp format, which have been very popular. And after many years of development, we are thrilled to release Scion, the next generation of MediaMatrix. We are immensely proud of our long-term legacy.
In September, we had an anniversary party in Bali for our APAC distributors and customers, which was a great event. We have also brought our 60th anniversary celebrations to trade shows, with both our ISE and InfoComm booths heavily leaning on our U.S. heritage with an old time Western bar theme showing our achievements over the past six decades. Like most established companies, we have had our share of ups and downs, but we continue to learn and grow as we look to the future with exciting new developments on the horizon.
SCN: I know it’s available in some of your mixers, so I have to ask: Are you for or against Auto-Tune?
CG: I’m for it. There is a big difference between the aggressive T-Pain effect of Auto Tune and its use for a tired singer trying to stay in key toward the end of a gig. Our mixers help tweak it just enough to make a pleasant experience for everyone.
SCN: What prompted Peavey to move into the Pro AV market back in the 1990s?
CG: We were approached by a startup company to distribute the technology that is MediaMatrix. At the time, there were some heated debates about doing this, as some saw Peavey as a hardware company and not a software company. But Hartley saw the opportunities this would have for the brand, and we flew people in and out of Meridian to teach them about the future of audio DSP. We were the first to market with this technology, and it proved to be a good decision that continues to give us opportunities for growth and expansion.
SCN: It’s all audio, of course, but what sort of technological overlap is there between your Pro AV products and your instrument/amp products?
There is little doubt that the future of all AV installations will be on the network.
CG: Peavey Commercial Audio is, essentially, made up of two halves—Crest Audio develops and manufactures products for the live performance space such as sound reinforcement, mixers, and amplifiers, while our MediaMatrix line focuses on networked audio, matrices, and sound distribution. Ultimately, it’s all about high-quality, reliable sound, so we use our extensive experience in speaker design to produce, for example, our superb Versarray speaker line.
But I will say the divisions have not overlapped as much as I would like. We need tighter integration of technology, but our engineering groups have been mostly apart and have not collaborated ideally. I see opportunity to take some of the most advanced audio technology on the market from MediaMatrix into our other sound reinforcement and MI products. The cost of driving the code has come down dramatically over the years, which could make the very different price points of each division less of an issue today.
SCN: What makes Peavey’s MediaMatrix unique in the industry?
CG: That’s an excellent question which I’m always happy to answer. Quite simply, Peavey was the very first to introduce networked audio protocols to the industry. Even Dante can trace its roots back to MediaMatrix.
SCN: Is CobraNet still an important selling point for your MediaMatrix DSP solutions, or has Dante taken over completely?
CG: We still have some customers running CobraNet and we can still, for a little longer, support them. However, anything new is moving to Dante or soon to sNET, our protocol that is backward compatible with current nWare installs as well as RAVENNA and AES67. The first CobraNet installation was with MediaMatrix.
SCN: What new Pro AV initiatives are we likely to see from your company?
CG: This is an exciting year for us as we launch the latest and greatest addition to our MediaMatrix range. It’s called Scion and is, quite simply, the most advanced and powerful media and control processor platform available. Scion is the third generation MediaMatrix DSP from Peavey and calls upon 30 years of our pro audio engineering excellence in both hardware and software design.
We have MediaMatrix systems operating in venues today that continue to run without issue for more than 20 years. This latest generation is purpose built from the ground up to meet the demands for today’s (and tomorrow’s) IP-networked installations. With proven 24/7/365 reliability in the most demanding and prestigious venues globally, we believe we are delivering the most powerful DSP based media and control system available today.
SCN: From an audio standpoint, what's next for the Pro AV market?
CG: There is little doubt that the future of all AV installations will be on the network. Across the U.S. and Europe, AVoIP solutions are now the norm, with the Middle East and Far East now embracing the technology. India continues to be a booming market for AV as a whole for both legacy and AVoIP technology.
Longer term, I wouldn’t be surprised to see zero cabling in certain projects in the years to come. Bluetooth and 6G will have almost limitless data capability, removing the need for cables altogether. I would expect many organizations to cling to their legacy infrastructure as the new technology is proven for security and reliability, but there will certainly be a lot less cabling as a whole. Similarly to the connection conundrums we have had around DVI, HDMI, and USB-C, it will be great if there was one wireless uniform connection protocol looming to make things easier for everyone, from manufacturers to end users.
