Earbud pioneer starts over with new business

ORLANDO, Fla. - In 1995, sound engineer Jerry Harvey started his first tour with the rock band Van Halen. He had been mixing sound for St. Louis rock bands playing small gigs in that city's bars since he was 16, but his big break had come in 1986, after a chance meeting with David Lee Roth led to his first big-arena tour.

But the 1995 Van Halen tour was different for Harvey, for that's when he made his first set of earbuds - the first in-ear monitors with both high and low outputs in each ear - in the back of a tour bus, using parts intended for hearing aids and pacemakers.

Those earbuds, first made for drummer Alex Van Halen, spawned Ultimate Ears, still the industry leader in customized earbuds for performing artists and audiophiles.

But now Ultimate Ears has a competitor: Apopka, Fla.-based JH Audio, which manufactured and sold about 3,000 customized earbuds last year to customers that include recording and performing artists such as T-Pain, Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys.

Even more interesting than that: JH Audio's full company name is Jerry Harvey Audio LLC.

Harvey founded JH Audio in 2009 after a two-year hiatus from the industry. He had founded Ultimate Ears in 1995 in Las Vegas with his then-ex-first-wife, Mindy Harvey, after the Van Halen tour. But in 2007, three years after a California-based capital-investment firm took a stake in the company, Harvey was forced out, he said.

"As soon as the investor thought that I was out of ideas, he thought it would be a good time to maximize his position in the company by forcing the founder out," he said.

A year later, Mindy Harvey and the capital-investment firm sold Ultimate Ears to Logitech International SA, the giant Swiss company known worldwide for its computer peripherals.

Ultimate Ears has changed significantly since then. Before Logitech acquired the company, it sold only high-end, custom earbuds for as much as $1,350 a pair. But its expanded product line now includes models that sell for as little as $20 each.

Philippe Depallens, Logitech's vice president and general manager for earphones and headsets, says the high-end models are still the company's focus. "We believe that we have been able to, despite [(Jerry Harvey's] departure, keep carrying the torch of having the best in-ear monitors on the market," he said.

Jerry Harvey says he didn't create the new company for a grudge match with his old one. "They are really good with computer peripherals, if you want a mouse or something like that, but I believe they have lost their way as far as what a professional audio person needs."

Tim Gideon, lead analyst of audio and video for PC Magazine, reviewed JH Audio's most expensive model, the JH 16 Pro ($1,149), last August and compared it with similar Ultimate Ear products. His conclusion: "They both offer very high-quality, custom-molded earphones. . . . I think they are about on equal footing."

Custom earbuds, or in-ear monitors, were developed as replacements for the audio speakers that face musicians or singers as they perform during live shows; the speakers amplify just their instrument or voice so they can hear themselves over all the other music and the din of the audience.

For new customers, the purchasing process at JH Audio starts with a trip to an audiologist for ear-canal impressions. Customers send the impressions to JH Audio, which crafts earbuds to fit each ear canal exactly, to keep out other, unwanted sounds.

Customers can choose the color of the earbuds and the color of the cords - or can order custom designs. The rapper T-Pain had 12-gauge shotgun shells glued to the outside of his; other sets have been dressed up with diamonds and pearls, though custom artwork is more typical, said Brittany Harvey, Jerry's second wife and JH Audio's chief executive officer.

"It's all about the user experience," Jerry Harvey noted. "They can be pretty, but when you put them in your head, the experience should be awesome."

That's why each set is handcrafted, from assembly of the miniature speaker parts to manually configuring the output devices in the headset to ensure each has JH Audio's signature sound pattern.

When the Harveys founded JH Audio in March 2009, they set up shop in a hangar at tiny Orlando Apopka Airport with the aim of making high-end earbuds for airplane pilots to replace bulky headphones.

The plan was to have pilots fly to the Apopka airport, get molds of their ear canals, manufacture the earbuds, and send the pilots on their way - all in one day.

"The problem is that there are only 600,000 pilots in America, and not all of those are active," Jerry Harvey said. "The product was a great product, but it wasn't profitable. There wasn't enough volume to keep it going." The company barely broke even on the venture, but it was able to work out the kinks in the production process now used to manufacture its current product line for musicians and audio enthusiasts, he said.

"We're strictly a music company now," he said. "That's what we do best. There are 600,000 private pilots in America - and there are how many millions of iPods around the world?"

The week JH Audio started selling custom earbuds for music, it received 250 orders. The company has benefited from a weak U.S. dollar compared with other currencies, given the demand for its products in Asia, its biggest growth sector.

"The custom in-ears have become like Breitling and Rolex watches - it's a status symbol," Jerry Harvey said. "That's why they have all this radical artwork done on them - they want people to know they have custom-molded earpieces."

Last December, the company moved across town to two small office buildings. According to Brittany Harvey, the company's sales last year totaled more than $2 million, a figure she expects to exceed in 2011. For one thing, the company plans to release in a few weeks a new top-of-the-line product designed by Jerry Harvey.

"It's kind of reignited his passions; he's always coming up with new ideas," Jaime Harvey, Jerry's daughter and the business' chief operating officer, said of the new company. "He wants to put a new product out every other week. We kind of have to bring him down to earth."

Jerry Harvey has lingering regrets about the way things turned out for him with Ultimate Ears, but one thing his first company did for him: It made him a rock star in the earphone industry. His name is still well-known by artists and audiophiles, and he credits both the name recognition and his desire to continually innovate for JH Audio's current success.

"We're going to be the industry leader. . . . That's what we strive to be," Harvey said. "That's all we care about."