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Huvudstadsbladet
1/2004
Translated to
English:
Hufvudstadsbladet - Sunday, 11
January 2004
He believes in clean
sound
High quality does not have to be
expensive. That's the opinion of Robert Woods, entrepreneur
in the sound reproduction field. Destiny brought him from
his home town of New York to Helsinki.
After he got his Ph.D. Robert Woods
planned on going to Europe to study Environmental Planning
in Copenhagen or Helsinki. Our traveler arrives one frosty
December morning in Finland. Woods decided to stay over the
winter. The garden city Tapiola and its creator Heikki von
Hertzen, who he interviewed, were so interesting that he
wished to study Tapiola further. When Woods finally had
settled down he could send for his belongings, including
among other things his record player.
When the goods arrived in Helsinki
the record player was broken - the drive shaft had been
damaged in transportation. A new one was needed, but there
was no replacement to be found in Finland or even in the
whole of Europe and so it had to be gotten from the
USA.
The incident was the beginning of a
career in the sound reproduction business. Woods left the
Tapiola project and founded his own company called Sound
Center in 1970 to start importing sound reproduction
equipment for the Finnish market.
New brands
The climate in the early 1970s was
not friendly for a newcomer who wanted to sell sound
equipment in Helsinki, especially if, in addition, he was a
foreigner. 'We carry all the brands we need, said the
representative for one of the bigger stores in the city when
Woods suggested they would include the brand he represented
in their own selection. But Woods did not give in. Today he
can proudly state that brands he introduced - like Marantz,
JBL, Harman Kardon, Teac and many more - are represented in
Finland.
Value for
money
Woods founded together with a few
friends a company manufacturing a new brand - NAD, which was
designed around the principle of good quality at reasonable
prices. He has no sympathy for the practice of the big
manufacturers of luring customers with blinking lamps and
booming exaggerated bass reproduction.
- - Imagine the long chain of
musicians and technicians that together do their best to
create a natural sound in the recording process. If a
speaker or electronics manufacturer puts in additional bass
or treble or misses some of the sounds the original fine
recording will be lost. Absolutely horrible, says Woods
and looks devastated.
He tells with a certain pride the
story about his own speaker brand that obtained the highest
marks in a stringent test in the leading Finnish journal in
the field. [Acoustics of Finland]
After thirty years in the field
Woods has no illusions regarding people's vanity or that
customers would get sufficient information about the
products they buy. It often happens that a prospective
customer comes into his store asking primarily for equipment
costing over thousands of Euros. When Woods shakes his head
at the question the customer disappears.
There are lots of people for
whom the price is more important than quality. Decent
quality does not have to cost a lot, but far too few
customers realize that.
Woods hopes that the big
manufacturers would meet the customers halfway and offer
good products to the large middle group of people that are
not content with mass-produced standard equipment but who
have no wish to pay exorbitant amounts..
Robert Woods sits in his shop on
Yrjönkatu and is still ready to fight for people who
wish to learn to appreciate quality in sound
reproduction.
The future will show who is the
winner: the Ph.D. in environmental planning or the big
manufacturers. The struggle has not been an easy one. The
market forces are strong and those wish to have, as Robert
Woods puts it, decent products at reasonable prices have a
hard time in getting their voice heard. When looking back
and comparing with the situation twenty years ago it appears
that Robert Woods now is on the winning side. His idea of
using simple solutions to keep the quality high and prices
down along the whole chain from the record or CD-player to
the speakers has been of decisive importance.
Yrjönkatu
8
Mon-Fri /
Ma-Pe 11:00-18:00
Sat / La
11:00-14:00
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