As Commercial Integrator continues our #AVLivingLegends series, we induct Ralph Heinz, chief technology officer of audio leader Renkus-Heinz, among the esteemed ranks. Harro Heinz, co-founder of Renkus-Heinz, recruited his son, Ralph, early on as a trained mechanical engineer who, according to Harro, “has a natural talent for understanding acoustics.”
Ralph Heinz has secured patents for innovations such as TRAP (True Array Principle) and Co-Entrant technologies, which helped establish Renkus-Heinz as a key player and known innovator in the pro audio sphere.
In this interview, Ralph Heinz discusses his beginnings as a “closet audiophile” to then spearheading the many innovations at the company. He also expresses his pride on the continuing legacy of Renkus-Heinz, highlighting the accomplishments of his son, Brandon Heinz, who represents the third generation at the company.
Read on to learn more about our latest inductee, Ralph Heinz! You can also check out our hub page for past honorees in the #AVLivingLegends series.
Commercial Integrator: What motivated you to join the commercial AV industry?
Ralph Heinz: You could say I was born to serve the commercial AV industry.
My father, Harro Heinz, founded Renkus-Heinz in 1979, back when I was just entering college. I had no acoustic or electronic chops then, but I was a closet audiophile and music junkie starting in my high school days. Because of my audiophile and music afflictions, I was always proud of what my father was doing with Renkus-Heinz, so when the opportunity came up 10 years or so later to join the company, I jumped at the chance. Back then in 1989, relistening to my records over a high quality Renkus-Heinz PA system spoiled me for conventional hi-fi. To this day, I still have PA speakers in home set-up.
CI: What has kept you motivated and engaged in the decades that followed?
Heinz: Learning about our customers’ problems and coming up with practical, original solutions is what keeps me motivated still today!
In the ’90s, it was all about constant directivity or frequency invariant dispersion. That lead to our development of complex conic waveguides which were also some of the first horns to be field rotatable, allowing for vertical or horizontal orientation of our speaker cabinets while maintaining correct coverage. Then low-frequency pattern control was the next acoustic hurdle, solved with larger waveguides to control longer wavelength along with di- and tripolar low-frequency arrays to control the longest wavelengths.
Then, to keep our systems practically sized and coherent in both time and space in the upper octaves, we developed our Co-Entrant manifolds and drivers. These directed the outputs of respective mid frequency (200 to 2000Hz) and high frequencies (2000Hz to 20kHz) through the same horn, improving performance and while reducing the size of our systems.
Today, the challenges and opportunities of digital steering and beamforming, first in 2D and coming in 3D, are what keep me up at night.
CI: Reflect on your role as both a mentee early in your career and as a mentor later in your career. Who helped shape the trajectory of your professional life? How have you tried to help shape others’ careers?
Heinz: I have to give credit first to my father, Harro Heinz, as my original mentor in life and business. I was lucky that he essentially allowed me to act on my instincts to create and design unique loudspeakers that were not just new but, in many cases, improved as well. Our original Co-Entrant driver technology has now become the standard in the industry with many OEM transducer manufacturers, like BMS and B&C, offering their own mid/high compression drivers similar in performance and spec to our own CDT-3.
I also consider Don Keele Jr. to be my horn, waveguide and acoustics mentor as he magnanimously shared his own AES papers with me, and pointed me to the others I should read as well, as we worked together on completing Renkus-Heinz’s original CBH series horns.
These days, I’m most proud of the fact that I can pass on what I’ve learned to newer members of our engineering staff. In particular, my son Brandon, a third-generation Heinz within the organization, has absorbed more speaker knowledge than I could possibly share, so lately, I find myself learning from him! I still have a couple unrealized designs within me, but most of our future designs will come from our current talented team trained in the Renkus-Heinz way!
CI: What’s the most memorable story/anecdote of your career in commercial AV?
Heinz: Early in my speaker-designing career, I had a nice conversation with consultant Craig Jansen where he explained that although he really liked the sound of my new speaker (the C-2, my first design, using horn-within-a-horn co-ax technology), he could not specify it in his projects. The small HF horn within the MF horn was a limitation he could not compromise on regardless of all the other benefits. So I went back to the office, tail between my legs, reflected on the wisdom that Craig had shared, and came up with and patented Co-Entrant technology that drove our growth through the ’90s and early 2000s.
Because of his previous relationships with other speaker designers, Craig never did specify any of our new Co-Entrant speakers at the time, though he did allow his colleagues to do so when appropriate.
CI: What has been your greatest professional accomplishment to date?
Heinz: I like to think that the IC Live X Series is the culmination of all our experience with beam steering in a compact practical cabinet, capable of concert-level sound with incredible articulation and intelligibility in the worst acoustic environments.
CI: What has been your biggest professional regret to date?
Heinz: Thinking that line arrays were a fad! We, as an industry, had just learned to make good point sources that arrayed well, then along came the modern line array with the promise of perfect sound forever.
CI: What’s the best advice or pearl of wisdom you either received during your career or came to realize on your own?
Heinz: Just because you can, does not mean you should!
Would you like to nominate a peer or colleague — or perhaps yourself! — to be featured in this #AVLivingLegends series? If so, just email Dan Ferrisi, group editor, commercial and security, Emerald, at [email protected].
