Transparent Cable - Karen Sumner Interview

It's Apparent at Transparent: Music Happens
Conversations with Karen Sumner, President, Transparent Audio
by Lisa Astor -- Ultimate Audio Magazine -- March/April 1998

Her love of music, combined with an innate desire to understand how things work has gained Karen Sumner the universal respect of the audio community. With an easy ability to talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk, Karen, along with her partners, have grown Transparent Audio into one of the leading audio companies in the world. And in the process, revolutionized how audiophiles view cables. As President of Transparent, Karen is responsible for creative concepts, including determining which products Transparent will be selling, their packaging and pricing. She also designs training and promotional programs. Through these programs, dealers can more easily recognize customers' needs and provide them with clear-cut choices. Although more sales staff are being added to the now 40 employee company, Karen is still actively involved in product training and product presentation for dealers and distributors.

Music and Mechanics

Starting with piano lessons at eight years of age, Karen began her life-long love of music. But it wasn't just the love of music that fueled her passion for audio, it was also her fascination with mechanical things. Even as a child, Karen was always more interested in taking dolls apart to see how they worked than in playing with them.

While in high-school, Karen wanted an audio system more than anything else in the world. Along with her father, an engineer, she built her first system. As most audiophiles, Karen remembers every detail of that first system, "We built a Heathkit integrated amplifier and bought a tuner. We also purchased a turntable from Radio Shack, not a complete turntable, just the mechanism and we built the suspension. We purchased speaker drivers from Radio Shack and built the speakers. It had dual wall-construction and was filled with beach sand. It was actually a great sounding pair of speakers."

Karen felt an immediate bond with the music. With her system as her closest companion, she explored all genres of music -- classical, jazz, popular, folk, Indian music and the work of popular singers, especially Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand.

Even then, Karen wanted to make the sound better. She felt she wasn't getting all the music and decided that the source -- the needle on the record player -- was not capturing all the sound. After calling dealers and finding out all she could about needles, Karen determined hers was the best available at that time. It took quite a few years before she realized that using a twenty-four gauge wire, or as she fondly calls it "the lamp cord," may have been holding back the music.

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The Winding Personal Path

Although she continued her love of music while in college by playing in a rock and jazz band, a bluegrass and jug band, and then in a rock band, it was really just to put food on the table while she studied literature. "Like many young women in my generation, I headed in the direction that I was pointed. If I had been encouraged, I probably would have gone in the direction of engineering."

Karen then spent seven years teaching English, German and Art in high school. She even completed a masters degree in education administration before deciding that a career in education wasn't for her. Briefly she was involved in the education publishing business.

Then she met Jack Sumner. It was Jack who introduced her to real high-end audio. She bought her first high-end system -- an Acoustat Model X, Levinson and Linn system. "I owe a tremendous amount to Jack in terms of influencing me to pursue my interest in audio. He has been the musical rudder for Transparent Audio. He is a musician and spends a tremendous amount of his design time listening to Transparent and other audio products. His absolute devotion to this is a significant part of our success as a company. And he is why I got involved in the audio industry in the first place."

Karen has never allowed the fact that she is a woman to hold her back in the male-dominated audio profession. "I think my passion for music and technology and my ability to tell a good story were the predominant factors in not making gender an issue."

According to Karen, what has changed is how women are accepted in the business world at large. When starting the company, they had very little money. Karen had to travel on the cheap when she traveled throughout the country to promote the company's products. "There was nothing any more distressing than to be a woman traveling on business alone in those days. It was the most difficult part of my whole career. Today the world is more sophisticated. When a woman is alone in hotels, airports, and restaurants, traveling people understand you are allowed to have your space," Karen shared.

The Evolution and Revolution to Transparent Audio

Eighteen years ago, Karen, Jack and their good friend Carl Smith started their company. The first step in the evolution to Transparent was Electrocompaniet, Inc. which imported and first distributed Electrocompaniet amplifiers and preamplifiers from Norway. "When we were distributing Electrocompaniet, they were extremely wide bandwidth amplifiers and had very little protective circuitry. They were very sensitive to the cables you hooked-up to them. It was a matter of survival to a find cable that not only worked well from a musical standpoint, but also from a stability standpoint. Because of this, we figured out early in the game that the cables were making a big difference in the performance of the amplifiers. This is what led me into this whole cable arena."

Karen had her cable epiphany when she first heard the Monster Cable Interlink Reference. "It was the first cable product that I ran into which had the real warmth and musical quality I was looking for in a high fidelity system. The second revolutionary cable was a speaker cable known as "Music Hose." It was three quarters of an inch in diameter and unwieldy. But when we hooked it up, music happened. And of course, that's what captured my heart. After that, everything else sounded like a ghost of what music should sound like."

Karen discovered that Music Hose was developed by Bruce Brisson, who was in the process of leaving Monster Cable to start his own company. Karen and Bruce created an alliance that began simply in 1984 with Electrocompaniet, Inc. introducing the marketplace to Music Interface Technologies (MIT) Music Hose.

Within one year, Electrocompaniet, Inc. captured the attention of the entire audio world with Music Hose. Their success and responsibilities with the growing MIT product range overshadowed their modest duties as an importer. They relinquished their role as an importer, and became Transparent Audio, Inc. Transparent Audio, Inc. acted as the development, manufacturing, distributing and marketing arm for MIT until 1992.

After parting with Bruce, Karen, Jack and Carl assessed where their company should head. With a history of understanding cable, it was easy for them to decide what was important and where to diverge from what they were doing before. Especially now that they had the ability to determine the performance and technology outcome of the product. Their company had taken another step in its evolution. Transparent Audio, we know it today, was launched in 1992.

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High-End Cables in the Marketplace

And what was the reaction to high-end cables? "Subjective reviewers know cables make a difference. There is still a wide range of objective reviewers who believe it makes no difference. They hold onto the fact that it couldn't make a difference. Their ears can hear only what they see on their test instruments. There are many battles left to be won."

Gaining dealer and distributor acceptance was not a problem. "When we first broke into the market with these high-end cables, we were very fortunate. There was a great deal of energy in the industry at the time, particularly among the dealers." Cables were another opportunity to help customers get the best sound from their system and therefore get the most value from their other component purchases.

Today, Transparent products are distributed throughout the United States and through thirty international distributors. Transparent does well in those economically developed markets where there is an appreciation for high-performance technology and music, such as Europe, the United States, Asia, South America and Canada. Transparent does not vary its product for different markets. "We make the product for the most discriminating market; truth and beauty are universals," explains Karen.

Transparent also sells to the professional audio industry including mastering facilities, recording studios and project studios. By improving the quality of the recordings, Transparent believes it is assuring that consumers will experience more of the music. "We significantly invest in our contacts in the film, classic and pop music recording world. It is an important commitment to improving the quality of recordings." Twenty-five Grammy Awards were presented in 1998 to artists that work in recording or mastering studios that use Transparent cable.

Growing the Industry

Karen was one of the original members of the five person team that designed the basic construct of how The Academy for the Advancement of High End Audio (now AAHPAV) would be organized. Now she is focusing on helping international people join the new audio and home theater-oriented Academy.

When asked about what we can do to promote high-end audio, Karen shared that she believes in development more than promotion. "The need to have music in our lives is universal. There are a limited number of people who would give music reproduction in their homes enough priority to devote the resources to possess the best. No amount of public awareness of high performance audio and its ability to provide the listener with more believable music experience will change that. Philosophically, I am more of an educator than a promoter. Providing potential customers with a higher quality experience at a specialty retailer is a more powerful force at this stage in our industry than expensive broad-based advertising."

"There are, of course, some extremely excellent specialty retailers who are expert in developing customers to aspire to the very highest quality audio or home entertainment systems. There are far too few of these experts, however, given the number of potential customers and high performance audio and home entertainment product options."

To bring the highest quality experience to consumers, Karen says that manufacturers must help the new generation of retail specialists, both in the domestic and international markets, merchandise their stores and the products they carry more effectively. People who seek quality are "self trained" to seek the advice of a specialist. And they expect a total quality experience from the moment they walk in the door. They already receive this type of treatment when they purchase automobiles, clothing, furnishings or contracting services.

"Audio sales people are often intimidated by customers who are qualified to buy the best. They frequently sell the customer less performance at a lower price than such a customer might afford and appreciate because the salesperson could not imagine owning the components. Manufacturers need to break down these barriers with sales people by training them on how to qualify customers that are likely candidates to own their products, how to provide these customers with compelling demonstration experiences and arming salespeople with product and company knowledge. Making it financially possible for sales people to own these products is essential to building sales confidence. A good sales person is capable of capturing customers with the excitement and fun of owning quality products."

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A Message to the Media

When asked about what the media can do differently, Karen offered up, "The press needs to send the message that when a consumer buys a high quality audio product, they also buy the company." Karen feels that the media often leads consumers to believe that they are just buying a gizmo, when they are, in fact, buying the total package (product, company and service before and after the purchase). It is the company behind the product and the local retailer that protects the consumer's investment for the long run. In keeping with this philosophy, Karen is involved in developing upgrades and update programs for Transparent's products so that the customers retain the value of their original investment.

Karen believes, "the audio press is over-focused on the product as a piece of hardware with very specific performance qualities as opposed to being a part of a total system that must work properly together. In addition to providing the reader with information about the aesthetics, technology, performance and construction of the product, the review should also include information about the user friendliness of the product, service, warranty, upgrades, compatibility issues and a complete report of the manufacturer's recommended use and application of the product. Background information about the company builds customer confidence. This total package is very difficult to convey to readers when the review focuses on a "product." The press should also do more to encourage customers to work closely with a good specialist to assemble an entire system."

The Next Revolution

As for the future, Karen believes that there will be less emphasis on two channel audio, although it will certainly not go away. DVD is going to make multi-channel audio more of a focus in many people's lives. And multimedia is going to grow.

Karen sums it all up, "People will still be looking for quality regardless of technical changes in the industry. Transparent is ready in terms of current product mix and products they are planning on introducing over the next two to three years in the audio, digital, video and power conditioning categories to stay ahead of market trends. All these changes can be good for the industry (especially if the DVD standard is established). But we don't know where that is really headed. Let's just hope for the best."

Reprinted with permission of Ultimate Audio©
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