Ken Kreisel Sound and Design, California (2025)

05/05/2025

MAY THE 4th (FORCE) BE WITH YOU...ALWAYS!!!

This post is dedicated to James Earl Jones who passed away last September 2024. Since that time, I have been meaning to post something about his passing and about my working with him at his California USA home on his Miller & Kreisel Sound/M&K Sound THX speaker system given to him as a gift from George Lucas around 1992.

Jones is one of my all-time favorite actors and a great person.

The need for me to custom design a very special center channel THX speaker to fit above his 7" shelf above his 35" TV was the catalyst for a whole new line of highly successful Miller & Kreisel Professional THX studio monitors which became a world standard in top studios around the world.

Please read the following PRO SOUND NEWS magazine interview of me, from 2000. I talk (on page 2 and highlighted in yellow) about how the custom James Earl Jones Miller & Kreisel THX system helped me create for George Lucas' Skywalker Sound/Skywalk Ranch Studio a requested custom studio monitoring system to be used for their updating of their first three Stars Wars movies for rerelease starting in 1997 and later for the new Episodes 1, 2, and 3.

Here is the Pro Sound News interview link:

https://www.kreiselsound.com/_assets/View_from_the_Top_copy_of_original.pdf

Being one of the very first THX licensees back in 1990 and also working with all the terrific award-winning recording engineers at Skywalker Sound (Skywalker Ranch), was the most fun a Star Wars enthusiast like me could ever have.

May the Force Be with You...Always!!!

and

Good Sound and Good Bass to You...Always...KEN

05/04/2024

MAY THE 4th (FORCE) BE WITH YOU...ALWAYS!!!

Being one of the very first THX licensees (The Tom Holman Experiment) back in the 1990's and also working with all the terrific award winning recording engineers at Skywalker Sound (Skywalker Ranch) was the most fun a Star Wars enthusiast like me could ever have.

I am not sure I can do a better May 4th post than I did last year:

MAY THE FORCE (4th) AND THE BASS BE WITH YOU...ALWAYS!!!

Hear it the way they hear it!

Here is a PDF link to the original "SOUND WARS" article in HDTV Magazine:

https://www.kreiselsound.com/_images/timeline_files/Sound%20Wars%20HDTV%20Etc.pdf

Here are some Star Wars related photos including a screen credit on Episode 3 (also got screen credits on Episodes 1 & 2) plus a photo of my Lightsaber (and young Anikan Skywalker, look carefully at the photo) and also a photo of the KEN KREISEL demo room in Asia with more Atmos speaker channels added including multiple ceiling subwoofers.

KEN

02/21/2024

Today, February 20, 2024, marks the 50th anniversary of the 1974 release of Steely Dan’s iconic Pretzel Logic album on ABC Records which included their US top 5 single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaxMrzrkzwI ) which has been loved and used for demo by audiophiles around the world for all these 50 years, including me. In 1973 I personally designed and installed the very unique audiophile studio monitoring system used to mix Pretzel Logic at Cherokee Studios in Chatsworth, California. The stereo monitoring system I designed included two dual 12” balanced push-pull subwoofers which later would be called “THE BOTTOM END!”

The story behind my audio involvement with Walter Becker and other members of the band, including their brilliant and innovative audiophile recording engineer Roger “The Immortal” Nichols and their ABC producer Gary Katz, is historic for me as it led to the 1974 creation of Miller & Kreisel Sound, Inc. and the rest is audio history as they say.

It seems like only yesterday when Walter Becker first walked into Jonas’ well-known Beverly Hills California high-end audio salon on Wilshire Boulevard (Jonas Miller Sound) around 1972, looking exactly as he did in the attached photograph. Walter Becker and Donald Fagan had recently moved to Los Angeles from New York to work with ABC Records (you can read all about their history on the Internet). Walter was an avid New York audiophile, and our store had an international reputation with an elite clientele of Hollywood film and recording celebrities, studio executives, studio recording engineers, and of course audiophiles.

In 1969 I was 18 years old (just graduated Beverly Hills High School), became a customer of Jonas’ store and immediately started working part time that summer while being a premed student. My very first customers were Barbara Hershey and David Carradine (that’s another interesting story for another day). I quickly became a partner in the store and started designing and building custom subwoofers for our customers with Quad Electrostatics and Audio Research Magneplanar speakers. Walter bought a set of Quad ESL’s and Walter and Roger Nichols (and other band members) became regular visitors to our store. In 1973 Walter and Roger asked if I could design and install a reference studio monitoring system for mixing their new album. I said no problem!

The stereo studio monitoring system I designed included two somewhat “innovative and revolutionary” (at the time) totally balanced 12” push-pull subwoofers which I changed at the last minute to non-push-pull because I was concerned about the exposed rear facing magnets being dangerous in a studio environment which, in those days, used only magnetically sensitive analog tape and tube type video monitors.

The extremely flat response monitoring system was a big hit with all the engineers and musicians at Cherokee Studios. They all especially loved the subwoofers and everyone wanted to buy the balanced dual driver subwoofers for their home sound system.

….to be continued….KEN

Address

California
CALIFORNIA

Website

http://www.KreiselSound.com/

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