Walton Stinson (born July 2, 1948) is an American sound engineer, business executive, and entrepreneur. He is co-founder and CEO of ListenUp, a privately held Colorado-based company that in 2019 was the 10th largest consumer electronics specialty dealer in the US. [1] Stinson was inducted into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame in 2009, [2] [3] along with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Irwin M. Jacobs, former Chairman of Qualcomm, and Richard E. Wiley, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
In 1982, Stinson helped introduce digital audio to the United States. He served as a delegate to the Compact Disc Group. Along with his partner, Steven Weiner, he traveled to Japan in October 1982 [4] to obtain the first batch of compact discs and convinced Sony and Nippon Columbia (Denon) to provide him with the first available players. At a promotional event for CDs in Denver on March 13, 1983, at Rainbow Music Hall, [5] he fooled an audience of 1,000 into believing they were listening to a live band, Grub Stake, when he segued the live performance into a digital recording of the band mid-performance to demonstrate the “live quality” of digital reproduction.
In the words of Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever, An Aural History of Recorded Music: “People like Stinson were the grassroots end of a publicity and marketing juggernaut that, in the space of a few years, transformed the CD from an expensive curiosity into the dominant music media.” [6]
Stinson incorporated dramatic stunts into his advocacy for CDs, highlighting their durability and reliability. During a gathering at the Gates Planetarium in Denver, he demonstrated this by smearing peanut butter and jelly on a CD, scribing it with a knife, then rinsing it in water and showing its flawless playback. [7]
In 2010, Home Entertainment Source (HES) merged with ProGroup [8] to form ProSource, the largest consumer electronics buying group in North America, with over $5.5 Billion in sales. [9] In 2021, Stinson was elected chairman of ProSource. [10]
Stinson has been a lifelong amateur radio enthusiast since the age of 10, [11] also known as ham radio, with call sign W0CP. [12]
In October 1983, during the United States invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, Stinson communicated via amateur radio with medical student Mark Baratella, [13] [14] who was based in Grenada. Baratella had hidden his ham radio gear at the start of the coup in a body bag in the medical school's anatomy lab. Operating from his room at the Grand Anse campus of Saint George's Medical School, Baratella became an essential link between the island and the rest of the world — as a source of news and vital information. [15] With telephone services down from the conflict, Stinson kept the media informed about the movements of Cuban troops, evacuation arrangements, and the safety and welfare of the medical students on the Grenada campuses, of which 120 American students were unaccounted for.
The Synclavier is an early digital synthesizer, polyphonic digital sampling system, and music workstation manufactured by New England Digital Corporation of Norwich, Vermont. It was produced in various forms from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. The instrument has been used by prominent musicians.
A boombox is a transistorized portable music player featuring one or two cassette tape players/recorders and AM/FM radio, generally with a carrying handle. Beginning in the mid 1990s, a CD player was often included. Sound is delivered through an amplifier and two or more integrated loudspeakers. A boombox is a device typically capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music. Many models are also capable of recording onto cassette tapes from radio and other sources. In the 1990s, some boomboxes were available with MiniDisc recorders and players. Designed for portability, boomboxes can be powered by batteries as well as by line current. The boombox was introduced to the American market during the late 1970s. The desire for louder and heavier bass led to bigger and heavier boxes; by the 1980s, some boomboxes had reached the size of a suitcase. Some larger boomboxes even contained vertically mounted record turntables. Most boomboxes were battery-operated, leading to extremely heavy, bulky boxes.
Thomas Eugene Stinson is an American rock musician. He came to prominence in the 1980s as the bass guitarist for The Replacements, one of the definitive American alternative rock groups. After their breakup in 1991, Stinson formed Bash & Pop, acting as lead vocalist, guitarist and frontman. In the mid-1990s he was the singer and guitarist for the rock band Perfect, and eventually joined the hard rock band Guns N' Roses in 1998.
The Williamson amplifier is a four-stage, push-pull, Class A triode-output valve audio power amplifier designed by D. T. N. Williamson during World War II. The original circuit, published in 1947 and addressed to the worldwide do it yourself community, set the standard of high fidelity sound reproduction and served as a benchmark or reference amplifier design throughout the 1950s. The original circuit was copied by hundreds of thousands amateurs worldwide. It was an absolute favourite on the DIY scene of the 1950s, and in the beginning of the decade also dominated British and North American markets for factory-assembled amplifiers.
Kenwood is a Japanese brand of consumer electronics. It has been owned by JVCKenwood since October 2011, when Kenwood Corporation merged with JVC. Kenwood manufactures audio equipment such as AM/FM stereo receivers, cassette tape decks/recorders, amateur radio (ham) equipment, radios, cellular phones, speakers, and other consumer electronics.
Recording consciousness as described by Bennett is the consequence of "a society which is literally wired for sound" in which, according to Middleton "this consciousness defines the social reality of popular music."
The Akai MPC is a series of music workstations produced by Akai from 1988 onwards. MPCs combine sampling and sequencing functions, allowing users to record portions of sound, modify them and play them back as sequences.
Jon Savage is an English writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his definitive history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming (1991).
Alpine Electronics, Inc. is a Japanese consumer electronics subsidiary of the Japanese electronics component manufacturer Alps Electric, specialising in car audio and navigation systems.
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording.
Garrit Allan Robertson Young was an American musician and music producer. He was best known as the original drummer of the indie rock band Pavement from its inception in 1989 until his departure in 1993.
The E-mu Audity was a digitally controlled, analog synthesizer made in 1978. It was inspired by Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann, and eventually evolved into a state-of-the-art, 16-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer with an included digital keyboard and sequencer that was intended to compete with Sequential Circuits' Prophet 5. The project was funded with royalties from Sequential Circuits for their use of E-mu's digital scanning technology in their keyboards, and was to be sold for $69,200.
The loudness war is a trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music, which reduces audio fidelity and—according to many critics—listener enjoyment. Increasing loudness was first reported as early as the 1940s, with respect to mastering practices for 7-inch singles. The maximum peak level of analog recordings such as these is limited by varying specifications of electronic equipment along the chain from source to listener, including vinyl and Compact Cassette players. The issue garnered renewed attention starting in the 1990s with the introduction of digital signal processing capable of producing further loudness increases.
Perfect Sound Forever (1991) is the third EP by American indie rock band Pavement. It was released as a 10" on Chicago's Drag City recording label. Its songs were later made available on the Drag City compilation Westing .
The history of sound recording - which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods:
Electronics Australia or EA was Australia's longest-running general electronics magazine. It was based in Chippendale, New South Wales.
Home audio refer to audio consumer electronics designed for home entertainment, such as integrated systems like shelf stereos, as well as individual components like loudspeakers and surround sound receivers.
NewBay Media, LLC was a magazine and website publisher founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City.
The Rainbow Music Hall was a 1,485-capacity music venue located in Denver, Colorado. The venue opened in 1979 by concert promoter Barry Fey and closed in 1989. Many famous artists performed at the Rainbow Music Hall, including:
ListenUp is an independent audio/video retailer and systems integrator founded in Denver, Colorado, in 1972 by Walton Stinson, Mary Kay Stinson and Steven Weiner, both graduates of Knox College (Illinois).