Yes, it is true, that after 15 wonderful years, and thousands of satisfied customers, it is with great sadness that I have to announce that on September 30*, 2006, we are closing that division and discontinuing that aspect of the business. OEM driver and crossover components as well as OEM licensing will not be affected. (* see below)

All service, warranty and technical support will continue to be handled by North Creek’s OEM division, as will finished systems under the North Acoustics brand name. The exceptions is the .A.R.T. Metro loudspeaker kits, which will be moved entirely to Advanced Ribbon Technologies along with .A.R.T.’s finished systems, and the Near Wall Specific™ Echo, Okara II and Kitty Kat families of loudspeakers, which will continue as kits under the North Acoustics brand.

No. All of the current and retired North Creek designs will continue to be the confidential intellectual property of North Creek Music Systems.

Once we began publishing our loudspeaker cabinet plans on the web, a trend immediately developed where we would have considerable technical dialogue with a customer, then he would vanish for three months, then he would order the loudspeaker kit. What was going on, of course, was that the customer decided on a loudspeaker, downloaded the plans and built the cabinets (which always takes longer than one expects), and then when the cabinets were finished, ordered the loudspeaker.

So, instead of vanishing without warning, we decided to leave this three month window open so that those who are building their cabinets now still can purchase their loudspeakers, those on the fence can make their decisions, those going from a North Creek 2-channel to 5-channel can do so, and those that want this one last opportunity to purchase a North Creek Music Systems’ loudspeaker kit can get it.

Well, more on this at the end, but without going into it in detail, the fact of the matter is that the rising costs of raw materials and increases in the fixed expenses required to run a business have forced North Creek’s kits and hobbyist components division into a position where it is no longer economically viable.

The Borealis, Rhythm and Manifest are all being manufactured as finished loudspeakers by other companies under license either in the United States and elsewhere, and this will continue to be the case.

The near-wall-specific Okara II – North Spirit and the spectacular Kitty Kat Revelator will continue on as kits and finished loudspeakers under our North Acoustics brand name.

The Pegasus has rapidly developed a kind of cult following as the ultimate Recording Studio Monitor, and we are looking farther into that market. We may even put out an active version.

The Prometheus…… I do not know if it will ever be possible to make the ultra-complex zero-delay-plane cabinet that the Prometheus requires in any sort of production situation. It is possible that an OEM may license the design or buy it outright. What I suspect will happen is that those lucky few who build them now will be the only ones who every own them.

The Echo family will continue on as the educational products they were originally intended to be, and offered in kit form to institutions in institutional quantities. It is very rewarding to know that the high school kids who build the Echo in shop class – the first time they build a cabinet, read a schematic, and hold a soldering iron - are building something that is distinctly high end. The Echo educational program will continue to be non-profit.

Our two subwoofers – the Thunder and Poseidon – are gone forever. The economies of scale of making an amplifier as good as the original Poseidon plate amp at any kind of reasonable price no longer exist.

Our other models – the Fiesta, Casita, Vision and Catamount – I am not sure of their fate. These are all wonderful loudspeakers but with the cost of European drivers going up and up and up, and the quality of much less costly Pacific Rim manufacturers rapidly catching up, I strongly suspect that building them as finished systems will not be a viable option. The most disappointing loss of these to me are the Catamount Revelator Signature, which is simply amazing on low power tube equipment, and the little Casita, which somehow manages to sound wonderful with my $99 5-disc changer and 20 year old garage sale special Technics receiver we use to break driver in.

Which brings us to the Advanced Ribbon Technologies’ Metro. The response to the Metro has been a little overwhelming, and we expect it to become an extremely popular product amongst those who have the right kind of listening area – high end two channel in a city apartment environment. The Metro defines its own standard for this type of application – a dipole in a small room, with a level of clarity one can only get from a ribbon. We will decide in October whether or not the Metro will continue on in kit form.

I received a lot of requests for information and technical support over the years from young individuals who wished to pursue a career as a professional loudspeaker designer. My advice has always been the same: stay open minded, study hard, believe your ears, and always remember that the most rewarding part of any career is looking forward to and enjoying its day-to-day challenges.

One of my favorite days with North Creek was when I returned to the windy hills of Blacksburg and Virginia Tech to address their chapter of the Audio Engineering Society. I had made copious notes about the subjects I wanted to go over (including my Master’s Thesis, the object of my two patent applications at Teledyne Acoustic Research, and the design of the original .A.R.T. 0.7 ribbon, of which I had the original prototype). My props were simple; a BG planer, an Aurum Cantus ribbon, an Apogee Stage ribbon, and the .A.R.T. prototype. Well, when I pulled out the Apogee ribbon and the entire group gathered around to inspect and handle it, I knew that demonstrating the workings of a ribbon was going to be way more fun than any lecture I could possible give.

To me, a discussion with a group of open minded individuals on a fascinating subject is about as much fun as one can have in a professional setting. It is largely for this reason what I have grown to love exhibiting at audio shows and meeting with attendees and North Creek’s customer base.

There are some North Creek designs that make great kits for DIY, that because of price would never have a chance in the finishes systems market. The Manifest hybrid loudspeaker kit, for example, would have to cost $15,000 in a dealer’s show room….. and no one would buy it. The Prometheus – which would be nearly impossible to make in any type of commercial application- would cost way more. But for less than $4k for the kit, both of these are a steal.

Fifteen years is a long time to run a company, and customer loyalty has been one of North Creek’s strong suites. We have several customers who built their first pair of (budget) loudspeakers in college, their second a couple of years out of college, and their 5.1 a few years later. We also have multigenerational customer families, father-and-son teams (and on one occasion, a mother-and-son team), and a couple of entire neighborhoods that are densely populated with North Creek loudspeakers.

As a businessman, I have always felt that customer loyalty was a direct result of providing quality products while conducting the business with the utmost integrity. There is no better statement of succeeding with building customer loyalty than repeat business.

 It has been a great run, and we deeply appreciate the patronage and loyalty of all of our customers over the last fifteen years.

It has been my policy to rarely recommend any other web sites or sources of technical support, and never link to other sites, largely because without knowing the writers or their qualifications in depth, I have no way of knowing whether or not the information on those sites are valid. North Creek's site has often been praised because for its complete absence of hype and the straightforward discussion of facts, methods and observations. Because after September we will no longer be providing technical support to the hobbyist community at large (although we will continue to do so for existing North Creek customers) I have been asked several times where the hobbyist should turn for trusted information.

I will say that the following are a few sites I have come to trust, although some of the information on them is beyond my field of knowledge, therefore I can not say that for certainty that they are 100% correct:

Euphase.com (measurement and some interesting math);

Zaphaudio.com (comparative measurements );

The FRD Consortium (software and simulations);

LinkwitzLabs (active crossovers)

As I mentioned before, along with North Creek’s OEM and educational products, we are also continuing with the Spirit, Kitty Kat and possibly the Pegasus as kits and finished loudspeaker systems under the North Acoustics Audio brand name. North Acoustics will be factory direct in the US.

Advanced Ribbon Technologies will be producing the Metro and a ribbon full range, which will also be available factory direct in the US. The ribbon in-walls are for new construction are available only to CEDIA custom installers.

The marketing plan is show intensive. North Acoustics and .A.R.T. exhibited and the VTV show in NY in May and will be exhibiting at RMAF in October, the Montreal show in April 2007, and CEDIA and RMAF in Denver fall 2007.

Those interested in the state of the art and the future of high end audio should make it a point to attend at least one audio show a year. The shows are wonderful experiences and a unique opportunity for both the manufacturer and the customer to meet each other face-to-face, shake hands, discuss fine points, and hear the latest. Attendees are what makes a show successful.

See ya’ there!

 To All North Creek Customers:

It has been a great run, and my only regret is that we did so few shows in the past and met so few of you face-to-face. Hopefully that will change in the future.

Thank you for your patronage!

(Warning: Windy, North Creek’s Inside Sales Manager, who is supposed to proof read all of this stuff, told me that the following section was too boring and she could not read it. So those whom do not have a lot of time or fresh coffee may wish to skip to the end).

As I said, it was a very difficult decision to close the hobbyist division of North Creek Music Systems. North Creek was started as a hobbyist-oriented company, largely because as my knowledge of loudspeaker design grew while I was still a hobbyist, I found that the more I understood about the subject, the less able I was to find relevant information and the parts I needed. I therefor set up the company to fulfill that need.

But for those who have the time to hear more of the story, here goes…..

It’s about blood.

Both of my grandfathers were entrepreneurs. My maternal grandfather was a sponsored Greek immigrant who came to America through Ellis Island before World War I, enlisted in the army, fought in the South Pacific, was part of the famous Lost Battalion, and survived the removal of one lung due to Mustard Gas poisoning. He returned to western NY after the war and like many good Greeks in his day, he opened a family restaurant. The restaurant grew into a candy store and then a small Ice Cream factory, and by the time of the great depression he had a successful and profitable business. One of his personal sayings was that "during the depression, people would spend their last nickel on an ice cream cone because it was the only luxury they could afford". By the end of the depression, along with his restaurant and ice cream factory he also owned five apartment buildings and the largest house in town. Also because his factory was so busy in the summer, he purchased a property in Old Forge NY and sent his wife, son, and both daughters there for the summer, so they would not be underfoot.

My paternal grandfather was of good English Protestant stock and could trace the family ancestry back to "the crossing" with Peter Stuyvesant. He was too young to fight in world war I and too old for world war II. He was recorded as being the first person to drive a gas powered truck through the downtown of Rochester NY, and owned one of the largest moving and storage companies in western NY

I barely knew either of these men, as they both died in 1972 and I was very young.

My father, a political liberal, attended the University of Miami on a baseball scholarship, but finding the heat unbearable transferred to Bowling Green University where he earned his degree in Latin American Studies. He attended graduate school at the fledgling American University of Mexico in Mexico City (serendipitously along with my future father-in-law, although they did not know each other) and played professional fast pitch softball. Among my fathers closest friends was Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and of the many stories that I have heard, they would double date, party hard, and discuss politics well into the wee hours. My father returned to America and joined the Army. Che left on his motorcycle, kept writing his diaries, eventually met up with Fidel and overthrew the government of Cuba.

After marriage, my parents spent a few years in Mexico but then returned to western NY where my father joined Boroughs corporation in international sales and later Bausch and Lomb. My mother spent the 60’s and 70’s as the quintessential "stay at home mom" of that era. She has a degree from University of Illinois and was skilled in accounting, and kept the books for my maternal grandfather’s ice cream company and his rental properties. She also spent a lot of time being a house wife, and for successfully raising three creatively minded kids she probably deserves a medal.

After 15 years at Bausch and Lomb my father had been promoted to the Director of International Marketing of the Scientific Optics division. He traveled all over the world on business, sometimes bringing mom along. In 1982, after 17 years of dedicated service, with two kids in college, he was called into his boss’ office, informed that the company has been "downsized", Scientific Optics moved to Singapore, and he was out of a job.

I had never heard the term "downsized" until that day, but my distrust in big business began at that moment.

My father liquidated his Bausch and Lomb pension and bought a small ice cream distributorship in Rochester NY. I quit college and along with my mother, my brother and two long time friends, we scrambled to keep the business afloat the first summer. My dad broke even that year with $360,000 in sales. I returned to Virginia Tech but spent every summer thereafter driving one of my dad’s trucks, delivering ice cream to restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and supermarkets.

My first job after graduate school was with Teledyne Acoustic Research, then the world’s fifth largest loudspeaker manufacturer. I joined AR while it was in a period of transition; many of the junior engineering staff had just left (including Ken Kantor and Andy Lewis), and shortly after I started there the rest of them left (Mark Nazar and Richie Juscszscsysyn). The only engineer on the staff was VP Alex DeKoster. I was not an engineer; I was a physicist. In terms of specialization, a completely different breed.

I did my best at AR. I was constantly putting out fires. I had to deal with UL. I had to solve QC problems. I still managed to do the job I was hired for (research and development) by working late most nights and working a lot of Saturdays. At my father’s ice cream company, working a 50-hour six day week in the summer was not uncommon, so to me that was just how people worked. I never really understood the 9 to 5 thing.

After 11 months at AR, I was called in to the president’s office. Apparently there was a problem with a woofer trim piece failing in the field. I was a physicist with no background in materials or adhesive science, but that morning I was also the most senior of the junior engineering staff. I walked into that office quite convinced I was about to lose my job.

Well, they did not fire me, but even though I was not remotely qualified to take on the project, it was made clear to me that solving the trim ring problem was my only priority. I proceeded to learn so much about adhesives that my nick name became "Mr. McGlue". I came up with new glues and bonding techniques that were really strange but somehow worked. At one point I even developed a glue that would not stick to anything except itself. Eventually, I solved the trim ring problem.

But my distrust in the security of big business was sealed. I started looking for another job with a smaller company. Six months later I found one (or rather it found me) with Apogee Acoustics, a small company of only 26 employees and at that time probably the leading and single most influential loudspeaker manufacturer in the world.

Most businesses are motivated by profit. Apogee Acoustics was a publicly traded company, so it also had to make money, but the company was driven by vision. Jason Bloom was the visionary. This was 1990, the heart of the golden age of high end audio. The technology had evolved to be very very good, and home theater had not yet transformed the market. Apogee thrived by manufacturing what many considered to be the best sounding loudspeakers of their day. Apogee loudspeakers could be found in the homes of Ambassadors, Prime Ministers, Opera Singers, recording studios and the Metropolitan Museum. Form followed function, and quality was everything.

Apogee Acoustics had a serious crossover component evaluation program. We routinely purchased samples of new capacitors, resistors, coil wire, internal wiring, etc. It was through evaluating samples and then trying (usually unsuccessfully) to get small quantities of an enormous variety of crossover components for my lab that the idea which became North Creek came to me: if I could not get a huge variety of matched crossover parts, no one else could either. If I could not get drivers in broken in, hand matched pairs with curves, neither could anyone else.

After that experience at AR, I was never comfortable working for someone else. I realized that I was fiercely independent and stubborn to the point of obstinance. In the works of my high school principal, whom in describing my behavior to my parents while discussing my suspension and possible expulsion, said I "do not respond well to authority". Also, I always wanted to do my own thing on my own schedule. Working for someone else is just not in my blood.

At that time, my father’s company had grown from less than $400,000 in sales to over $10,000,000. He needed help. Specifically, he needed someone whom he could trust completely to come in, organize the books, straighten out the accounting trails, and computerize the entire company. I needed time to sort out my personal goals and also to begin to learn how to build and run a business. So I left Apogee and Boston for my father’s ice cream company in Rochester. For a year and a half, I worked in and studied business systems, accounting, employee relations, and inventory management. I also took classes in catalog mail order. I learned more about business in that year and a half than I thought it was possible to learn in a lifetime (mostly, that I had a lot more to learn).

In March of 1992, my tasks at the ice cream company completed, I wrote the business and marketing plans for a hobbyist oriented loudspeaker component and kit business, set up the business structure, ordered my inventory, and gave my father my resignation.

The nature of business is that it must continue to adapt and evolve to suite the ever changing needs of the market, to stay abreast of technological advances, and to achieve the missions and goals of its owners. I feel confident in saying that North Creek Music Systems has continued to accomplish this throughout the history of the company.

North Creek Music Systems started as a vision. If one word could be used to describe the loudspeaker hobbyist community of the early 1990’s, it would be "enthusiasm". The community was growing, Speaker Builder Magazine was publishing excellent material and its readership expanding, people had the extra time and money to be deeply involved in their own projects, and the ground was fertile for growth. North Creek’s role was to add professional knowledge to the community along with the highest quality of raw materials. We accomplished this by seeking out and adapting US Military grade products to crossover parts, partnering with the best driver manufacturer of that era, and sharing knowledge through publications (the Cabinet Handbook and the Wiring Guide), design projects (including both the North Creek Catalog and booklets such as "The Borealis Project"), and most recently on the web (such as the MAPD White Paper and the Echo and CM-7 projects). We also kept an active crossover component development program going, which I believe is the only one in the world.

North Creeks Mission was driven by my definition of generosity. I feel it is generous to develop a product that is of superior quality and then offer and promote it so that those who choose to own it will have an item of superior quality.  The original Mission of the company was to promote the highest end loudspeaker components to the hobbyist community, manufacture the world’s first professionally designed, audiophile-quality loudspeaker kits, and in time develop a revolutionary ribbon driver and offer it in loudspeaker kit form.

In the first two aspects of our mission, we succeeded overwhelmingly. By the mid-1990’s, North Creek was the dominant player in high end loudspeaker kits, manufactured the world’s lowest DCR air core inductors, introduced the hobbyist community to the cascade-bypassed capacitor technique, and virtually created the high end resistor market.

As the years went by, our product line continued to advance and by the early 2000’s we had an exceptional family of loudspeaker kits that served many different needs. It still took until early 2006 to fulfill our target goal of line extension - to offer two to four models of loudspeaker kits for each placement constraint, one at each quality level that was reflected by the products price. These are:

Near Wall A/V: Echo; Okara II; Kitty Kat

Free Field 2-Channel Specific: Pegasus/Prometheus (for exceptional 2-channel A/D converters)

Free Field A/V full-range: Borealis/Rhythm/Manifest (for good 2-channel and excellent AV processors)

Free Field A/V full range: Casita/Fiesta (for systems that require a forgiving loudspeaker)

Free Field Subwoofer-Specific: CM-7/Vision

Free Field Valve-Specific: Ariel/Catamount/Prometheus HOT

Each one of these loudspeaker systems has achieved some degree of success. Every one is very very good, and offers extraordinary value to those willing to and capable of building their own cabinets.

But I think the most unique aspect of the company is that we aspired to take our own work and make it the best on the market while trying to unselfishly educate the customer of why our products were better. The level of technical discussion on the North Creek Music Systems web site is case and point. No where else is much of this information published, and to the best of my knowledge, no one else has spent anywhere near the time, money and effort that North Creek has to research and develop this knowledge base, let alone to share it. We took the products that we had, produced by manufacturers who’s quality and consistency we trusted, and made them better. We increased the knowledge level of uncounted speaker builders over the years, and have thousands of satisfied customers, all of who’s patronage we deeply appreciate.

Nowhere on North Creek’s hobbyist web site was there any hype. I felt it was crucial throughout the fifteen year history of the company to maintain a solid information source written with integrity and free of embellishment. There is no misinformation, and no conflicting information. It was though our information base and our exceptional products that we sought to and succeeded with building customer loyalty.

None the less, on July 1, 2006, when the numbers came in, I knew I had to make a tough decision. The cost of aluminum, from which our capacitors were made, had doubled, and the cost of our military grade copper had tripled. SEAS and Scan Speak driver prices had become astronomically high (although they are worth every penny). The costs of operating a warehouse and distribution center (especially heating and insurance) had grown at almost 20% per year. Property taxes had quintupled.

Through it all, we have really struggled to keep our prices fair. Ten gauge coils are big, heavy, costly, and sound wonderful. Scan-Speak and SEAS drivers are built with fanatical attention to detail, their quality control is excellent, their technology is top notch, and there is no way to get audio reproduction at their level of fidelity for less. Therefore, North Creek products are expensive, and in order to keep the hobbyist division viable they would have had to become considerably more expensive. In my opinion, the business model could no longer work.

Those were pretty dark days the first week of July back at the ‘Creek. Coming to the decision that North Creek Music Systems would discontinue hobbyist component and loudspeaker kit sales was a very difficult, and having to wait four more days to inform the other people involved – while trying to find a way to save their jobs – was grueling. It was during that period that the original version of this statement was written, and shortly thereafter posted.

Being trained as a physicist, owning, operating and running a business if a funny thing. The number of decisions, obstacles and hurdles is enormous, and while the hours are incredibly long, operating a business successfully is also profoundly rewarding. For me, it has never been about profit. It’s about freedom, challenge, personal growth, and my strange definition of generosity.

I have chosen to discontinue the hobbyist and kit aspects of the business rather than adapt the business model in such a way that North Creek would become a company I would no longer want to run. This decision has nothing to do with success or failure. It is a choice, and a hard one. It became obvious to me that this is the only way to be able to grow North Acoustics and Advanced Ribbon Technologies, and continue to develop and promote loudspeakers of superior quality. My choice is to continue to do what I love, stay true to my principles, and follow our credo. As far as credos go, I think ours is a pretty good one.

North Creek Music Systems’ hobbyist division provided high end components and kits to thousands of speaker builders for the last 15 years. We have always tried our best to serve our customers with utmost integrity, and to always generously provide in depth knowledge, exceptional customer support, and products of superior quality. North Creek’s hobbyist division will close on September 30, 2006, but North Creek will continue on, as North Creek OEM, North Creek EDU, North Acoustics, Advanced Ribbon Technologies… and who knows what will come after that. One thing – our Credo - will stay the same:

We believe that enduring quality is the most significant virtue of any product ™.

-George E. Short II, July 22, 2006

(*) after September 30^th .... On July 5^th, 2006, when we first made public that we were discontinuing our loudspeaker kits division, we expected to do about six months in business between then and September 30^th, so we planned for it and began building ahead. What we were not prepared to do three months of business in July, six months of business in August (historically our slowest month), and three more months of business the first week of September. Needless to say, we were a bit overwhelmed.

We have received a lot of great letters from individuals expressing their fondness for North Creek and appreciation for our service to the hobbyist community over the last decade and a half, and a few calls to reconsider.

Entirely due to the unanticipated volume of loudspeaker kit orders we received in August, we had to restock a lot of items that we had expected to have "just enough of to get by", including copper, film-foil capacitors and resistors.

When I opened my bills form our early September wire and capacitor deliveries, I was amazed to discover that mil-spec copper from which we make inductors and mil-spec aluminum foil from which we wind Crescendo capacitors had gone up 15% since our last shipments in June..... and resistors have gone up 8%. It is crazy, and there is no end in sight.

What this means, I am very sad to say, is that even if we were this busy all the time the business model still will no longer work.

We are continuing to take orders up to September 30, 2006. As of this writing, Sunday September 10^th, our production schedule is full through the third week in October. To those individuals who placed orders in mid-August and are still awaiting shipment, I sincerely apologize that it is taking us so long to get everything built and tested. We are slammed. For those waiting until the last week in September to order, we will do our very best to get everything assembled, tested and shipped as quickly as possible. It is going to take a little time but it will be North Creek quality all the way. -GES

 The Last Day at North Creek

I got in pretty early the morning of Saturday September 30. We had a listening appointment set up on Sunday for two long time customers to audition the Kitty Kats and the Metros. It was a beautiful day here in the Adirondack Park and my alma mata was playing on ESPN that afternoon, I wanted to get the equipment set up and my work done early so I could enjoy the game guilt free.

The fax machine had been busy all night, and there were orders down to the floor (it is the old kind of fax with thermal paper on a roll). I was surprised but I figured that would be the last few orders we received. Throughout the day the fax kept ringing, in fact we were receiving three faxes an hour, definitely a record for North Creek. By the time I left, at 3:00 that afternoon, we had received orders for 27 pair of loudspeakers. Wow.

I changed the paper in the fax machine and went home.

The next morning I came in to prepare for our guests. The faxes were once again down to the floor, and last fax had come in at 9:45 PM, for a pair of Rhythm Revelator Signatures.

My guests arrived and were so pleased with the Kitty Kats they ordered three pair, and reserved a pair of Metro's.

We received three more orders in the mail on Monday, a pair of Manifest Signatures, a Echo System, and an unmarked iron cored inductor for which were going to wind replacements. Good orders, and a pretty good day.

All told, in the last week North Creek Music Systems was open, we received orders for over 120 pair of loudspeaker kits. Quite frankly, I was absolutely amazed. I had no idea North Creek had such a following, and we never expected anything even close.

We are doing our best to build, pack and ship everything in the order it was received. As of this writing, on October 11^th, we are finally catching up with the first week of September. We hope to have everything finished and shipped by mid-November.

To those waiting for their loudspeakers, I sincerely apologize for the short delay. We will not sacrifice quality for speed and we are doing everything we can to make sure all is perfect. I guarantee it will be worth the wait.

To everyone who contacted us to place a last order and wish us well, Thank You Very Much! We appreciate your patronage and support for all these years!

-George E. Short III, October 11, 2006

Almost a year has passed since we announced the closure of the hobbyist division of North Creek Music Systems. It was amazing to see how it ended.... the product flow was a steady stream leaving here at a rate about three times what we were used to in the busy season. We did not complete out backorders until mid January of 2007. We had the company Christmas Party in February.

Then a funny thing happened. We had enough material to build about a dozen more pair of Okara II - Ikemos and the same number of North Spirits, so we announced it on the web site. Most of them sold in a couple of weeks. We had about 40 complete Echo systems, or 160 pair of Echoes as the case may be. They keep moving at about a pair a day, so they should last the year. We get requests for a pair of North Kitty Kats at the rate of about one per week, which we fill.

On April 16^th, 2007, driving home from Montreal's Festival du Son 30 miles per hour in four wheel drive through the remnants of a Nor'easter which blasted its way through New England and left most of western Vermont and the Adirondack Park without power, we heard scattered news of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Having been both a student and an instructor at VT, and visited there two short years earlier to address their AES chapter, Hilary and I were devastated by the news. Our discussions were that it could easily have been us (we have vowed to go together) or that it may be us tomorrow, which is disturbing, but more so that it could have been my classroom and my students, which I personally find strangely more disturbing.

Hilly and I spoke about it the entire ride home and for some time afterward, realizing of course that someday it will be us, whether we go in quietly in our sleep or quickly by surprise, or in some other fashion.

We visited Blacksburg a few weeks later, stayed at the Inn at Virginia Tech, shed our tears at the memorial and wandered around the spectacular campus and throughout the village for a couple of days. Blacksburg's soul has been damaged, but her spirit is stronger than ever.

My book for the trip was Jim Collins' Good to Great, a discussion of business growth from a statistician's perspective, specifically why a very few companies which have plodded along for years will have a critical transition point and suddenly experience steady, maintained growth for a decade or more, while other companies in identical industries with similar assets and management experience either continue to plod or fade away.

The cornerstone of Good to Great is that those business which thrive operate in a tightly focussed niche defined by the intersection of three "circles" : 1) what is the company better at than any other company; 2) what is the company management passionate about; and 3) the correct economic engine.

Applying Mr. Collins' analysis to North Creek and to our competitors prior to the summer of 2006, it does a fine job of explaining why the structure that was North Creek could not survive (increases in costs killed our economic engine), and why supplying the speaker building hobbyist market has become a two horse race.

Introspecting North Creek now, in the late spring of 2007, what are we the best in the world at? We are the best at crossover component design and development (a few people may disagree with this.... oh well...); we are the best at crossover assembly; we are the best at Near Wall Specific™ loudspeaker design (again, some may disagree, but over the last three years I have made a point of listening to virtually every other near wall loudspeaker out there, and none of them were able to equal the North Spirit. The North Kitty Kat Revelator is in a league all its own); we are the best at long ribbon transducer design and manufacture (no one else has the Sweet Field™).

I do not know if we are the absolute best at 2-way free-field crossover design. I do know that we are very very good at it, but so are a few other companies and a couple of individuals.

What are passionate about? We are passionate about great sound, a great two channel experience, and a great home theater experience. We are passionate about the music, the illusion and the goose bumps.

What is the market? This is always the question. The summer of 2006 taught us that the ultra-high end loudspeaker kit market, which was North Creek's economic engine for almost fifteen years, is no longer viable, but the spring of 2007 showed us the Near Wall Specific™ market is. The turmoil at Circuit City and bankruptcy of the Tweeter Etc. chain in June of 2007 showed us that big box stores and Audiogon have ended the era of main stream high end retail; 30,000 attendees expected to the CEDIA show in September 2007 seems to indicate the custom home theater install business is thriving.

What is the best economic engine? One never knows until one discovers it, usually by trying a series of engines that evolve from their predecessors. Currently we are focussing on "contacts per show" and then "sales per contact".

The obvious direction of the company is to keep on with our Advanced Ribbon Technologies' In-Wall ribbon, the project which has consumed 100% of  my research and design time for the past year and a half and the subject of three patent applications. We are showing them at CEDIA, and actively looking for dealers and investors.

But part of my heart is still with two channel, and with sales figures in from most of the first half of 2007, it appears that both the Metro and the Near Wall Specific™ designs may still have a future in kit form.

I talked it over with the team, and the conclusion was that since we continue to produce the Okara II - North Spirits and the Kitty Kats as finished systems under the North Acoustics brand name, it makes business sense to continue them as kits as well. All of our other fine speakers - the legendary Rhythm and Borealis, the ultra-revealing Pegasus, and the sweet sweet sweet Catamount, are all officially retired, as are the Visions, Manifest, Prometheus, Fiesta, Casita, CM-7, Poseidon, Thunder and Leviathan.

So today's North Creek Music System site features only these three product families (Echo, Okara II and Kitty Kat) along with the Metro Ribbon Hybrid loudspeaker in kit form. A fine group of products, to be sure, and enough, I think, to viably keep the company firmly attached to its roots while building towards the future.

-GES, October 2007

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