A system engineer looked at me for a long moment. He said nothing, he just looked. Inside my head I thought: "That's it, I've blown it, this is about to get ugly." Because a moment earlier, in front of a crowd, I had said his loudspeaker had a flaw.

Let me start from the beginning. My history with DAS Audio goes back a long way. As early as 1996 I bought two 12" and two 18" boxes in İzmir and installed them in a venue in Balıkesir for a friend. That sound stayed with me. Years later, working outdoors with Işın Karaca, I did such an easy, clean job with DAS Aero 12 that working with that system was a genuine pleasure.

One day DAS Audio's Turkish distributor got in touch. They were launching the new Aero 20 and 40, and wanted me both to give a talk and to mix the concert that evening. During preparation, DAS Spain politely warned me: their system engineers weren't very open to criticism, so it would be good to speak carefully.

On stage I listened to songs I know intimately. I liked the Aero 20s very much — a mature, balanced sound. But on the 40s there was a notch around 600–700 Hz; the sound came across a little nasal to me. And I said so.

That's when it happened. The system engineer, Joel, said nothing and just looked at me, and kept looking. "Right," I thought, "I've hurt the man's feelings, now this gets complicated."

It didn't. I ran a fast, plain soundcheck with the orchestra — one desk, straight from the front, in its simplest form. The local orchestra really was a tight, lovely group. Then DAS's sales director, Nacho, pulled me aside: "What did you say to Joel — and in front of his own distributor?" Here we go, I thought, you couldn't keep your mouth shut again. But Nacho smiled: "Whatever you said — Joel already admires you."

That night we went on stage with that orchestra. And a sound came out of that band.

Joel came to the desk and checked my settings: almost everything flat, the main EQs untouched. He looked through the reverbs and delays — their EQs flat too. Then he looked at me, and looked at the sound; he couldn't believe that sound was coming out of his own system.

But the evening didn't end there. Joel and Maria took me aside and asked the real question: why isn't DAS as successful as the other big brands? I said it straight:

"Because you're not selling systems — you think you're selling components. Companies buy only the loudspeaker from you and run it with their own DSP and their own settings. Until you stop that, success won't come. Without a plug-and-play system — an ecosystem — this doesn't work."

I said it and moved on. But that sentence stayed with me, because I truly believed it.

Months later at Musikmesse Frankfurt, at the Yamaha stand, Joel found me — and in front of everyone he dropped to his knees and shouted "big audio engineer!"

And years later, everything I said that night fell into place one by one. DAS released the ARA system — exactly the kind of ecosystem I had described. And the two engineers from that conversation walked over to the masters of the system: Maria moved to d&b and worked there for years; Joel recently moved to L-Acoustics. So the two people I told "not components, systems" went to the two companies that do it best in the world.

What comes out of all this? That night I said two honest sentences. One was a small thing — a notch in the 40. The other was much bigger — why an entire company was standing still. I said both not to flatter anyone, but because they were true. And honesty didn't end that relationship; it built it. That is exactly why they trusted me.

The sound that convinced Joel that night was no trick and no makeup either. It was a flat desk; it was simply getting the foundation right. A good system gives you back whatever you gave it — my job was to respect its essence without breaking it.

A good loudspeaker deserves an honest ear. And sometimes you get to watch a single honest sentence be proven right, years later.

Yılmaz Yeniyol
SENIOR AUDIO SYSTEMS ARCHITECT · BALANCE ENGINEER
info@balance-engineer.com · +1 561 931 9785 · Boca Raton, Florida · Think Simple, Balance Effortlessly