Interview
MGS - We are here with Tony from Evidence Audio. Welcome sir.
TF -Thanks very much, I appreciate your interest! But my friends call me dude when they are being polite. “Sir” kinda freaks me out.
MGS - Can you give us a backround of EA? How did it all got started?
TF - Well I’ve been a gear head and music nut all my life, and usually when you put those things together you get someone like me studying, playing, breaking, building, and toying with the stuff that makes music. I’ve always been tinkering with electronics as related to music and when I was forced to grow up and seek out some work for myself, I made sure I got a job in the field. One of them was with a cable company doing some innovative work for home audio. For many years I was faced with listening to every imaginable variable in cable material and construction to see what impact it had on an audio signal. It was a pretty scientific process and over many years it became apparent which design features could provide consistent and repeatable results, even when demonstrated to new listeners. The acid test was something like: “Would my mom describe the same differences between (for example) copper “A” and copper “B” that I would?” If so, I was on to something and the data could be added to the tool box. Anyway it was a fine education and I subsequently founded Evidence Audio in order to bring these same experiences to musicians.
Nothing was being done for musicians! Everything available was the same old rehash of bad-to-average ideas. A few cables for sale were differentiated by their sound properties (on the packaging at least), but mostly musicians were faced with the choice of BBQ Spam or Fried Spam. Not very appetizing. I knew if I could get a few people to listen I might be able to give the cable market a bit of credibility. That’s the only way I would try to do this for a living. There’s definitely no room in the marketplace for a new flavor of Spam.
MGS -What is your official title and what duties do you perform?
TF - Hmm… I don’t know what my title is. I don’t get asked often. I suppose if there were more than one person at Evidence Audio titles would explain what we do. But to be honest, what you see is what you get. I’m a one-person company designing the cables, building the cables, packaging the cables and driving to the UPS Store and Post Office.
I wake up, check email, turn on my cell phone, and make some coffee. Go back upstairs and check email again. Fire up my music. This morning’s collection is from Tom Waits. (“Mule Variations” is a great CD by the way, no matter what some unadventurous people might say.)
So here I’ll sit here until about 11:30 and answer emails to customers and surf the web. Back downstairs for lunch. My kid takes a nap about noon and I can’t make too much noise in my office which is next to her room. So, I take any orders I have down into the garage and fire up the soldering iron. Could be an hour in the garage, could be five. Depends what’s on tap. Sometimes I have a large order I’m working on for a distributor so I chip away at it day by day. Sometimes I’m just making a few custom cables and get them packed up by 2:00pm.
Then it’s back upstairs to the computer to work on my website, answer emails, and poke around the web for some distributor somewhere who isn’t selling good cable, but should be. Send him an email and see if he’s got the interest to check out what I do.
I love computers and I can waste a good day or two with a project in Photoshop or Dreamweaver if I have an idea. Might shoot some video showing some tips on preparation, so the next time someone asks, I can email him a short movie. These sorts of things. Everything.
MGS - Can you tell us about EA and its main focus and goals for the future?
TF - Well my focus and goal is to build products that make people say “Wow! I don’t have to eat Spam if I don’t want to!” I just plan to keep on doing what I’m doing with new cable products.
There are a lot of cables that need to get built for musicians for various parts of the signal path.
It’s getting hard to buy a bad guitar with a reasonable budget. The same is true with amplifiers and pedals. If you save the money to afford something using great parts, smart labor and design; you have lots of fun options at your disposal and probably won’t go wrong.
However, it is still pretty easy to go out and spend a lot of money on a piece of cable that compromises the point of using good gear in the first place. I’ve got the basics covered right now, but there’s still some ground left to cover.
MGS - What sets EA apart from other cabling companies?
TF - That depends. Eight years ago I would have said “Everything!’. I would have said that everyone else (despite their claims) was in this as a commercial exercise, and that Evidence Audio was the only company with a fresh design idea that made a meaningful improvement in performance.
Today however there are a handful of companies who have also decided to skin the cat in a different way. They are bringing performance-based cables to musicians without slapping their name on a generic product and trying to steal market share from “Vendor X, Y or Z”. This is good news!
Musicians, of all people, deserve better. The market isn’t yet flooded with many great products --so they need to do some homework or find trustworthy guidance -- but it *is* getting easier to find great cable.
As a tiny, irrelevant company in the grand scheme of things, I’d like more companies out there doing good work to grow the market for quality. I’d rather share 10 customers a day looking to buy a great cable then to have all 3 of them. If you go shopping for cable and end up with something from Evidence Audio, JPS Labs, Cardas, Audience, Two Rock, Van Den Hul, etc., you’re going to get something that’s good and lets you connect with your music in a new and meaningful way. Years ago that wasn’t the case.
So today I’m no so different from the few other companies that care… we all care in our own unique way and the products we build reflect that on a technical level – but I’m not alone in my mission to save the world from bad sound. It’s the mission that matters.
MGS- Why is a cheap guitar cable not good enough for a pro or semi pro?
TF - Hmmm that sounds like a dangerous question. First define “cheap”.
Where cheap is defined as “Of poor quality; inferior”, my answer is that it prevents a guitar player from appreciating everything else in his signal path, and ultimately his own creativity, to the fullest extent. That’s a shame. Stuart Hamm is a phenomenal bassist. When someone of his caliber says after all these years: “What you hear affects the way you play... and the Evidence cables make me sound and play better.”, that validates what I’m trying to do with my time here on earth. I’m not going to cure cancer, bring world peace, or invent fat-free ice cream, so if I can just get by with musicians feeling that way about what I do, I’ll die a happy man.
I’d rather not discuss cheap defined as “Relatively low in cost; inexpensive or comparatively inexpensive”. That’s very personal and we don’t know relative to what. A $400 cable is cheap relative to a $2,500 cable. A $30 cable is cheap relative to a $150 cable. Is a $10 cable cheap? That’s an insane amount of money to some people on the planet. Plus balanced against the notion of “cheap” meaning “of poor quality”, I promise you there are some seriously cheap $150 cables out there. It gets confusing.
Also let’s define “pro” and “semi pro”. Or should we? I really think music is such a personal thing, and that any gear should be tried and judged on its merits by individuals regardless of someone’s professional status. On the core level most “professional” musicians in the world play for the same reason you and I do. I’ll be damned if something good enough for him isn’t something good enough for me! Making music is about fun and expression. We should enjoy the toys that bring us pleasure and bring us value.
I busted my ass as a kid mowing lawns to buy the best gear I could afford because it brought me pleasure. Last week I got this email from a kid in Canada stating: “Whats the good word?hopefully it is good! I emailin to say Im love your stuff. I usually save my cash from mowiing lawn(im14) and buy more of your products.Cant never have enough.”
I see my reflection in this kid and his appreciation for what I do is powerful. That kid deserves everything a pro does.
MGS - We tried out the Lyric HG cable and loved it. Tell us about your latest line.
TF - The Melody is my newest cable and compared to the Lyric HG, the Melody is a bit de-tuned in midrange clarity/focus. A good visual analogy is a camera lens slightly out of focus. There is a little thickness in the midrange covering up the smallest nuances. In addition the Lyric HG has a better dimensionality. The Lyric HG is better with regard to dynamics on a macro and micro level. Bounce. Rhythm. The black between the notes is blacker. Quieter. Faster attack... More extended bottom end that is controlled.
However compared to typical stranded coax cables, the Melody is less fatiguing, sweeter, provides greater note & chord distinction, has a tighter bottom end and is just more honest to what the fingers are doing with the strings. It paints a more accurate picture of the player's style, technique, emotion -- and choices in guitars, amplifiers and effects. It’s what I call a "coax done right". If you have to make an audio cable as a coax, this is the way you do it.
Note that for the compromises the Melody has relative to the Lyric HG, some people actually like a bit of “blur”. I made a cable for an amazing guitarist which is a version of the Melody – he likes it more than the Lyric HG saying it hides his mistakes better (which I thought was cute).
In summary I simply wanted to build something with in reach of more people that was clearly better than the generic cables re-badged with a brand-name and sold for $40-$70. Also an option for guys who want something a little smaller for pedal boards, or can’t afford to use 200 feet of Lyric HG on a large rack installation.
MGS - Are you a musician?
TF - Of course! Aren’t we all? I play a little guitar and piano very poorly. To be more accurate you could say that I suck at it. But I’m a musician. Those people who sing Karaoke poorly? Fabulous musicians. I envy their courage to get on stage; which I don’t have… but they are definitely musicians. People who tap their foot to a song are musicians.
Sure, in my next life, I want to come back as a rock star, but for now I keep it in the closet. As for standing on stage in front of millions? Making cable is my way of participating in that process. I live vicariously though everyone who makes music with what I do.
MGS - What do you do in your spare time when not making cables?
TF - I appreciate the (mixed) blessing of not having a big company. Since I work from home, on those days where I’m done at 2:00pm, I try to spend the time with the family and appreciate how much my little girl has changed each day of the last three years. It’s awesome. Besides that, I’ll roll out on my mountain bike and try not to kill myself. There are some great trails here in So Cal, and I love to ride. Climbing is the real challenge, and I like to earn the right to a downhill run. The only thing that I hate is that for the hour it takes to grind out a technical climb, you only get 10 minutes of downhill to enjoy as reward. Someone smart needs to tweak the math on that. I just haven’t brought myself to do the “shuttle thing”. One must fight for one’s right to party! I also geek out on the computer a lot, but aside from that time seems to fly by.
MGS - Have you supplied any major players out there with cables for live or studio use?
TF -Yes, in the last few years word is getting around the phone will ring with some names I’ve heard of. Pretty cool! But that 14 year old in Canada is the one I’m proud of.
MGS - What was the biggest improvement in the cable world in the last 15 years?
TF - Oh my. It *IS* just wire. Then again what would a guitar or amp builder say? We aren’t in a particularly high-tech industry where Moore’s law gets applied on any front. I hesitate to offer any specific features to any one product out there. May I generalize and suggest the biggest improvement in the last 15 years is simply the ability to find cables that do in fact allow more music to get through?
MGS - Great answer Tony. Thanks again for talking with us!
