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Biamp Systems of Beaverton, Ore., has a big hand in Olympic sound systems
(Oregonian (Portland, OR) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 5--When an announcer's voice booms through Shenyang Olympic Sports Center this month, 60,000 soccer fans will hear it sharply thanks to a Beaverton company's audio technology.
Biamp Systems Corp. makes the digital brains of sound systems used in spaces ranging from meeting rooms to huge stadiums such as the one in Northeast China where Beijing Olympic soccer matches will take place. The company is one of a handful of Oregon businesses, including dozens of grass-seed growers, which will play behind-the-scenes roles at the games when they open Friday.
Matthew Packer, Biamp's north-Asia regional manager in Beijing, says he's sure the audio systems will hold up under pressure.
"We're pretty confident because these systems have been installed for more than eight to 12 months," Packer said. "They're systems that are designed to have inherent fail-safe properties. So when anything goes wrong, they are able to self-heal or rectify the problem."
Nike and Adidas America, the Portland-area shoe and apparel giants, will have the most visible presence at the games starting Aug. 8. But smaller Oregon operators such as Biamp and grass-seed grower Turf Merchants Inc. of Tangent will also play key roles.
During the past year, Oregon companies have sold about $20 million worth of grass seed to China, which has become the industry's No. 1 foreign customer, said Dalton Hobbs, Oregon Agriculture Department assistant director.
"There's a very high likelihood that Olympic athletes will be playing on Oregon grass," Hobbs said.
It's difficult to trace the seed to specific venues, just as it's often hard for Biamp to know which of its systems end up where. Biamp has shipped products over the years to more than 90 countries from Cambodia to Tajikistan, with exports growing to 40 percent of its undisclosed annual sales.
The company makes audio computers that process sound. An analog microphone picks up a person's voice, which travels by cable to a Biamp converter. The converter digitizes the voice, sending it by Ethernet cable to a Biamp digital-signal processor, the brains of the operation.
The processor -- or box, as Biamp workers call it -- uses super-rich software to condition the sound by filtering out background noise and beefing it up. The box then sends the sound to a second converter, which switches it back to analog before sending it to speakers.
Biamp managers know their boxes are also installed in the Beijing Olympics Tennis Center, Disability Sports Training Center and National Stadium's press room. "It's highly likely there are one or two boxes sitting in other Olympics venues that we don't know about," said Packer, a 29-year-old Australian based in Beijing.
Biamp's Chinese distributor, Shanghai-based Melody Development Co. Ltd., deals directly with customers. Samantha Shen, Melody's president, said Biamp technology is a few years ahead of its Chinese competitors, and Biamp's quality is more advanced .
"We have been to some factories in China, some much bigger than Biamp's," Shen said during a recent tour of the Beaverton company's plant. "But the quality is not so stable as Biamp's, and the management level and work ethic need to improve."
Biamp President Ralph Lockhart, an electrical engineer with an MBA, emphasized quality during the tour. He paused at an automatic optical-inspection machine that quickly analyzed 2,930 solder joints on a circuit board, questioning the integrity of two.
Only one or two products fail for every thousand made in the plant, Lockhart said. "The industry standard is 1 percent," he said. "We're 10 times that good."
Two years ago, the company invested more than $1 million to comply with new European standards banning electronic products containing specified amounts of lead, mercury and other hazardous materials. Now Biamp uses gold and silver solder instead of tin and lead.
Biamp began in 1976 as a maker of mixing boards and other equipment for live performances by musicians. During the 1980s, it shifted into the installed-sound market.
Rauland-Borg Corp., which sold public-address systems to hospitals and schools, bought the company in 1989. The Illinois company wanted Biamp in order to match competitors who sold components for meeting-room audiovisual systems.
"We thought it was sick," Lockhart said of Biamp when it was bought, "and it was dead."
For three or four years, Biamp made products under Rauland's name. Then it moved from analog to digital network signal processing.
Biamp's engineers went on to develop proprietary technology to eliminate echoes that can reverberate through stadiums or mangle speaker-phone calls. The point is to move sound efficiently, and to keep it intelligible.
Managers have kept almost all manufacturing in Beaverton, reasoning that sophisticated audio products would take more time and money to make in China or elsewhere abroad. Exceptions are analog amplifiers and mixers made by a partner in India. Earlier this year, Biamp bought an Australian company, Brisbane-based Creative Audio, for its experienced engineering development team.
Biamp products are installed in corporate boardrooms, conference centers, theaters, courtrooms, churches, schools, universities, hospitals and casinos.
In Beijing, Biamp's Packer won't be able to travel all the way to Shenyang for soccer. But he's looking forward to attending his first Olympics.
"I got some swimming tickets and weightlifting tickets," he said. "I had to get them the same way everyone else did."
To see more of The Oregonian, or to subscribe the newspaper, go to http://www.oregonian.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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