WOODLAND PARK, CO — Popular audio consultant, educator and author John Murray passed away on Sept.14, 2021, after losing an extended battle with ALS. He was 68.
Born in Enon, OH on May 11, 1953, Murray had an avid interest in audio from an early age. He attended Greenon High School in Springfield, OH, and went on to study audio at Ohio University, earning a B.S. in Radio-TV Production and Engineering in 1975.
After graduation, Murray worked as a sound contractor in Dayton, OH from 1976 to 1980. In Indianapolis, IN, he learned Time-Delay Spectrometry (TDS) measurement in 1981 prior to the creation of Crown’s original TEF products. Later, he became the first TEF-10 operator in Ohio while doing sound contracting until 1989. He was also a certified Meyer SIM and SIA SMAART user, as well as an alpha & beta tester for EASERA’s SysTune measurement system.
Through 1991, Murray was the Professional Sound Market Development Manager for Electro-Voice. He ran their regional sound seminars in the U.S. and Canada and was involved in the development of Altec Lansing’s Variable Intensity Horns and EVcs Stadium Horns, as well as several other electronic and acoustical products.
He followed this with a job as product manager with TOA Electronics, and was involved with the world’s first audio DSP products. He worked with TOA’s Professional Sound Engineering Department, developing new analog and DSP electronics, as well as speaker products. In 1993, he was fortunate to be the first to simultaneously perform DSP-based acoustical measurements and signal processing on a single laptop PC in real-time and demonstrated the technique at an AES meeting in Dallas, TX.
Through 2000, Murray ran MediaMatrix training and product demonstrations for Peavey’s Architectural Acoustics division. In 2000, He returned to TOA as the Field Training Specialist and held TOA-product and general-audio training sessions across the U.S. He was also a long-time instructor for the Live Sound Workshop held at Chapman University yearly before the NAMM shows in Anaheim, CA.
An Audio Engineering Society (AES) member since 1980, Murray presented two AES papers on DSP-based loudspeaker tuning and co-chaired the 2002 AES Line-Array Symposium. Having attended several Syn-Aud-Con (Synergetic Audio Concepts) seminars and workshops, he developed and chaired workshops. He was an instructor for Syn-Aud Con’s EQ07 workshop, attended by 144 people from 10 countries, including end-users, A/V integrators, audio consultants and manufacturers.
From 2002 to 2009, Murray founded and ran ProSonic Solutions, an independent manufacturers’ sales representative firm that also offered sound-system-tuning subcontracting for audio consultants and system design assistance, commissioning, and technical training to A/V system integrators.
After developing the original gain-structure and speaker-equalization classes for both NSCA and InfoComm, Murray was also an InfoComm Adjunct Faculty Member, teaching more classes for the NSCA. In 2007, he was awarded Instructor of the Year for NSCA’s Technical College for Line Arrays: “Separating Reality from Marketing Hype” class. His second audio-educational DVD, “Levels, Metering and Gain Structure,” was the basis for the NSCA’s first online accredited training course.
Murray was also the principal of Optimum System Solutions (OSS), a systems-optimization and intelligibility-measurement consulting firm. He also long worked with Renkus-Heinz, running regional Iconyx steerable line-array certification seminars and performed system commissioning and troubleshooting for their dealers across the US. He also has written extensively for pro audio magazines and served as Technical Editor for FRONT of HOUSE magazine of several years.
John Murray will long be remembered by his many friends and associates throughout the industry — not only for his encyclopedic knowledge of pro audio topics, but also his innate ability to present difficult subjects in a manner that was clearly understandable, even to novices. And no one who ever met him will ever be able to forget his huge smile or amazing sense of humor. He will surely be missed by all.
Murray is survived by his wife, Linda Goodheil Murray. A memorial service is planned for 2pm on Saturday, October 9th at the Mountain Memorial Funeral Home in Divide, CO.
