Interview: Waring Hayes & Richard Fleming

More often that not, when we conduct these interviews with duos, it’s a sibling, parent and child or a marriage relationship. However, evidently from this issue’s interview, you don’t have to be related to form part of a winning pair. Although their job roles and responsibilities differ, their business areas of expertise complement one another, which has led both of them to have played a significant part in the company’s growth and development over the last 15 years or so. Rachael Rogerson-Thorley travelled south, down the M6 in the UK, to Stourport in The Midlands to chat to Waring Hayes and Richard Fleming of XTA fame.

The Ti-Series - what a fantastic product. There were three core people in that development team and we were two thirds of it.”

You’d never know The Midlands, UK triangle of Bewdley, Kidderminster and Stourport-on-Severn was a hotbed for audio, unless, of course, you work within the professional audio industry. It is home to manufacturer Midas / Klark Teknik - currently owned by Behringer - a local office of Cadac, again headquartered in the UK, but overseas owned, in this case, China. It is also home to well-known industry figure, David ‘Webby’ Webster - formerly of DiGiCo - when he isn’t travelling the world in his new position at CODA Audio. However, during the latest visit to the region, the prime destination was the XTA

offices to grill Technical Brand Manager, Waring Hayes and Sales Application & Support Manager, Richard Fleming about the past, present and future. After a pub lunch that featured the safe word ‘yoghurt’ - don’t ask - we sat down with a mug of builder’s tea for an entertaining interview that delivered the perfect blend of professionalism and laughter. It’s difficult not to laugh around Rich, whether it’s at one of his many funny anecdotes, or simply at his infectiously loud laugh that’s hard to miss! Waring is equally measured in his dry sense of humour, I never read an email from him without

laughing out loud at my desk. Of course, it’s not all about the fun and games, but we are an industry that very much lives by the ‘work hard, play hard’ motto. And, over the years, these two have worked at XTA, they have most definitely worked hard to drive the company forward and deliver the products the industry has asked for. But let’s look back a little further first, and see how each of them first got involved with audio. For once, it isn’t the story of failing to become a rock-star! It’s immediately apparent from his accent that Rich is a local lad; he grew up in Kidderminster and studied electronics at college. “In the ‘80s - when we made things in the UK - people were into electronics, it’s just what you went to college and did,” began Rich. “It gave you a springboard into lots of different jobs but that has all changed now. There are not as many electronics courses in the UK anymore, so, it means a lot of younger engineers

don’t have the same electronics training background nowadays.” After finishing college, he took his first job at the aforementioned Midas / Klark Teknik in the mid-‘80s. But it was as he was leaving the company that he first came into contact with Waring - who was just starting at that company - during a Midas / Klark Teknik pub-crawl that began at Kidderminster train station - more of that later. “After I left Klark Teknik, I went to work in the test department at HH Electronic,” Rich continued. “I spent about six weeks in test, then they moved me to R&D and that’s where I paid my dues working for an audio product manufacturer. I did everything that went into making a product; metal work, PCB design, circuit design, implementing a line to build powered mixers and so on. “Out of hours, when I wasn’t working, I was getting my hands dirty as a man with

a van and a small PA system. At weekends, I’d be doing small PA jobs and a couple of times a year big shows like The Olympia in Blackpool. I used to cart a load of sound and light equipment up there, I knew a promoter who put 2,000 kids in the hall for a school disco, and I’d provide the gear and DJ. I got to the point where I was asking myself, ‘do I become a hire company or do I stick with the day job?’” Obviously, Rich stuck with the day job, but the skills and knowledge he picked up from his DJ days have come in handy later in life. “Your average R&D guy probably hasn’t got hands-on experience, but when you’re providing sales application support - as I do now here at XTA - I do come across problems, but I often know how to fix them, thanks to those early days.” Rich joined XTA in 2003, when the company started making backpack modules, and assisted with the design, helping get that product range into production.

• Above A quality mic placement in 1989; Waring at his trusty HH desk with built in analogue effects; Band meeting 1989 in Belfast.

28 INTERVIEW

• Above Rich out and about in the early years.

“Next, I got involved with the Ti-Series of network breakout and amp products, for which I was working on hardware design as well as tech support. At that point, I realised there was more fun in sales and applications, rather than sitting behind a computer screen all day - that was about eight or nine years ago now. I’ve been travelling the world, showing people how our products work, and being the sales and applications manager ever since.” Waring shares a similar background to Rich, in as much that he worked with local bands doing recordings during his youth, spent his first student loan on a mixing desk, and studied within the realms of audio and electronics, too, studying Electronic Systems Engineering in Belfast. “I did a sandwich degree, so I worked for a year in-between,” Waring explained. “But

the places we were offered were either boring jobs in Northern Ireland in telecom companies, or there were a few placements in Germany, at companies such as NCR. I was into Hi-Fi stuff, but there was nothing like that in Northern Ireland, so I looked further afield, but, every week, I was getting rejected by the places I was applying for – no placement students in Hi-Fi it seemed.” “I decided that I needed to look more at audio, not just Hi-Fi and that’s when I found Klark Teknik. They gave me a year placement, then I went back to Northern Ireland, did my finals and got my degree, afterwards they offered me a job in R&D. I stayed there for 9-10 years until the last buyout before Behringer,” Waring added. After working on his own for a few months, Waring joined XTA in 1999. “I’d

spent nine years in R&D writing software and doing product designs, there was nowhere else locally where I could do anything similar,” he continued. “I developed the software side of the backpack modules, and the industrial design and software for the Ti Series for MC2 but, following the success of those, there was a need to expand the R&D department – and, at that point, I knew there were people who could write better software than me, so I decided to stick with the product design and visual side instead, which lends itself to the marketing side of things, too.” Originally, Rich and Waring met through a mutual friend at Klark Teknik. Staff, both past and present, would often go out to celebrate birthdays, usually starting at the train station pub. “We were introduced one time,” said Rich. “And I was told we’d

• Top Strike a pose!

get on great.” Seems that mutual friend was right on the money. But how did their working relationship develop? “At heart, we are both engineers, and we still get excited about that,” said Rich. “Over the years, if there’s been a new loudspeaker, for example, we still get excited about it. The Ti-Series - what a fantastic product. There were three core people in that development team and we were two thirds of it.” The Ti-Series is a range of scalable and networkable amplifiers and processors. Today, it includes networkable power amplifiers, breakout boxes, signal processing and powerful iCore monitoring and control software. The series was developed in conjunction with technology partner MC2, the amplifier manufacturer that merged with XTA back in 2007. Based in Devon, today, MC2, has a separate manufacturing site to XTA, as well as logistics and some management still existing in the south coast office. However, the R&D department and the majority of the management have travelled North and are based in Stourport

with the rest of the XTA team. With building expansion in the early noughties, there was plenty of room for growth. “I’m not a big football fan myself, but my wife is,” said Rich. “And I’d liken the merger to a football team getting a new manager, you have to prove yourself. I think the fact that we’re still here means we’ve passed the tests, but it has been quite an interesting time. You only have to look at the scope of R&D and engineers we have here, they are award-winning heavy hitters. It’s one of the reasons we get on so well, because, when you’re both engineers, you have a mutual respect for one another. When it comes to developing product though, both Waring and Rich agree that there is a constant battle between R&D engineers who have designed it, worked with it and know exactly what they want it to do versus what the customers want it to do. “It’s really easy to over complicate things early on in a product and it happens so often,” said Waring. “We have a good understanding how people work out in

the field, we then go back to the engineers who don’t have that experience and report on what the markets wants,” Rich added. As far as XTA goes, the company cut its teeth in signal processing with the 2 Series, followed by the 4 Series, which was an evolution of its predecessor. “I think if you spoke to engineers of this generation now, they’d say the 4 Series is the more successful product, it’s what gave the company its name for DSP over the years,” continued Waring. “As for MC2, I think the E-Series made them what they are today. It was about four or five years ago when that series was in its heyday, so not too long after the merger. It was at that point that people were saying ‘you have fantastic processing and amazing amps so why don’t you have them together in one box?’” Step forward, the APA Series. Launched in 2014, this range of products was the first to combine the technology from the two companies. Featuring native Ethernet control, Dante audio networking and sufficient processing to power four channels

plus supply digital audio back onto the network, APA features a power amplifier platform that can provide up to four x 5,000W per channel with an enhanced power supply. The research into the power amplifier design led to the introduction, in 2017, of MC2’s first DSP amplifier - the Delta Series, which also became the DPA and DNA Series for XTA later that same year. The DPA and DNA amplifiers offers unique features such as four channels of processing and four independently processed aux outputs (DPA), and the ability to output these auxes onto the Dante network to be used by either other DPA amps or by DNA amplifiers that were non-DSP designs, with the ability to accept analogue or network audio. For these more recent product series, Rich said: “It was a time when I got more involved with the engineering side, so I contributed to the workflow of the front panels and the software. Waring is the one who draws and documents it all!” Waring added: “I always find that, when I’m writing a product spec, if I write it in enough detail for someone to design and build a product from that spec, all I need to do is scale it down and you have a manual, then, from the manual, I can put a website description together or anything else you might need. That’s how it worked with the Delta Series, and I was also responsible for the industrial design, aiming

for a look that wasn’t an anonymous black box, but also nodding to the E Series, with the idea that both ranges could work in harmony, both visually and in engineering audio realms.” The series was launched to rave reviews after a big teaser marketing campaign and was quick to receive the recognition of product awards. “I think the best start to finish campaign was Delta and it was one of the best we’ve done in recent years,” said Rich. And on many levels it has paved the way for the future, although Waring is not convinced that it’s all about an all-in-one solution. “I’ve been noticing conversations that have been going on via social media and it’s almost the opposite of what we were asked for five years ago, which was ‘why can’t you do DSP and amplifiers altogether?’ Now, people are asking for them separately. We thought that people didn’t want that as much anymore, but maybe there’s still a market,” he said. Rich chipped in: “I think this year will be big for XTA products, and I’m excited! We will see something that people have wanted from us for a while.” A hint at what is to come, but he wasn’t giving too much away. When these two are not at the office, they have plenty of other interests, too. Waring offered: “I’m learning to play the piano again. I learnt as a kid until I was around 14. The piano teacher I had was a friend of the family, and a jazz pianist, so not the best teacher, he was just too laid back and

• Above Rich and Waring in reception at XTA headquarters

it wasn’t very structured. I have a room full of music equipment as I used to do a lot more re-mixing and make music and, a couple of years ago, I decided to get rid of the old junk and I bought an Allen & Heath digital desk to tinker with instead. I also have an unhealthy obsession with light bulbs.” I didn’t delve any deeper on that one! For Rich, it’s all about the festivals, and he still does the odd DJ gig from time-to-time too. He’s also into skating. “I spend a lot of time rollerblading. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been experimenting with different types of blades and having a lot of fun. It’s fair to say that there are times outside of work when it is extremely colourful and I’m not sure what some people in work would make of some of the fun stuff you get up to outside of work!” This mischievous side of Rich - and in fact, Waring too - surfaced at the end of the interview when I conducted a photo shoot at the office to produce some accompanying imagery for this article. They had me in stitches with their poses, but they went one better and decided to take a few additional shots of their own when I wasn’t looking. I found the evidence the following morning at the office, which, of course, made me smile. And with that, it isn’t difficult to see how these two charismatic individuals have made their mark on the industry.

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