MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — The crackdown on indecency over the airwaves may be costing shock jock Howard Stern plenty, but it’s brought an unexpected windfall for a local audio equipment company.
Symetrix Inc., one of only two U.S. companies making audio delay devices, can’t keep up with demand, said Paul Roberts, the company’s sales administrator.
The reason is simple: In the face of huge new fines, spending $2,000 or $3,000 on equipment to keep potentially offensive words off the air is a good investment.
"Pretty much a week or two after the Super Bowl, we just started receiving huge orders," Roberts said.
In fact, in the first few days after the wave began, Symetrix had more orders for the delay equipment than it had received in the previous couple of years, he said.
"The wave has been going pretty much ever since," Roberts said.
Long before the Federal Communications Commission’s crackdown, Symetrix already was well-known in the radio industry.
Dane Butcher, who has a degree in music from the University of Washington, started the company in 1976 after getting interested in making equipment for recording studios.
Butcher, still the majority owner of the privately held company, said Symetrix moved from Seattle to Lynnwood in the early 1990s before landing in Mountlake Terrace about a year ago. Virtually all the equipment Symetrix sells is assembled in that location north of 220th Street SW.
A pioneer in voice and audio processors, which can improve how a talk radio host or disc jockey sounds over the air, Symetrix now makes a wide range of equipment used by broadcast studios.
KRKO 1380 AM in Everett, for example, uses a few Symetrix components, said Andy Skotdal, the station’s general manager. For the past eight years, the station has used one of the company’s devices to create an eight-second delay.
Symetrix also manufactures products for recording studios and other sound systems. For example, one Symetrix system senses the volume of noise in a hotel lobby or a nightclub and then adjusts the volume of music going out over a sound system to match the environment, Roberts said.
The company’s audio delay device has always been a steady, if not spectacular, seller, Roberts said.
"The market was there, but it wasn’t huge," Roberts said. "It was a small percentage of our business."
He noted that orders typically came from American and Australian radio equipment dealers, as broadcasters elsewhere typically aren’t regulated as strictly when it comes to language.
The device takes the analog signal coming from the microphone, converts it into digital bits, then uses mathematically programmed algorithms to create short audio segments that can be edited with the push of a button before they reach the air.
Symetrix’s device can be adjusted up to 20 seconds, though a seven- to eight-second delay is more standard, Roberts said.
Many news and talk stations that broadcast mostly live interviews or take phone calls have installed delay devices over the years. But with the FCC’s new scrutiny, a wider range of radio stations are nervous.
"Recently, the stations have shifted their concern from what people on the street might say on the air to what their paid hosts might say," Roberts said.
That’s because an occasional verbal slip by a radio host often was overlooked or, in the worst cases, resulted in a maximum fine of $27,500 per instance.
Federal officials already were considering raising the FCC fines when Janet Jackson’s exposure during this year’s Super Bowl halftime show jump-started the issue.
Two bills moving through Congress would allow the FCC maximum fine for indecency to increase to $275,000. And the agency already has begun issuing fines for each time a profanity is used rather than one fine for each program.
"If you say two swear words, that’s half a million dollars," Roberts said.
That’s especially worrisome to giant radio chains such as Clear Channel Communications, which has announced it is buying $500,000 worth of delay devices for its stations across the country.
Robert Riggs, Symetrix’s production director, said business already was on the rise for the company’s other products before demand exploded for its delay device.
As a result, the company has added a few manufacturing and technical support employees, purchased additional testing equipment and expanded its warehouse. But the new shelves don’t have much inventory.
"They don’t sit around very long," Riggs said.
For the delay devices in particular, it may take until the end of May to clear out the backlog of orders, Roberts said. The nation’s other audio delay manufacturer, Eventide of Little Ferry, N.J., has reported a similar backlog.
"We’ve had to do everything we can to get the parts to make them," Roberts said. He added that another local company, Arlington-based KLW Name Plate, has benefited from the surge. That business provides the delay device’s handsome metal exterior.
While the extraordinary number of orders for audio delay machines won’t last, Roberts said the new orders help Symetrix get out word about its new products, which also use the brand names AirTools and Lucid Audio. And he expects that even after the recent surge dies down, Symetrix will still see higher annual sales for its delay device than it did in the past.
"It’s a nice problem to have," Roberts said.
Reporter Eric Fetters:
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