By Mark Graham, CEO and Owner, Symetrix, Inc.

What are you passionate about? Do you have any moments in your life where you have the desire and the luxury of time to do your very best at something? I hope so. It’s one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Years ago, when I first met my wife Rachelle, I’ll confess it was pretty much love-at-first-sight for me, but didn’t get the impression I was having the same effect on her. And in the course of those early days I learned something earth-shatteringly important: she didn’t like enchiladas. I know! How is it possible to not like one of the greatest foods ever created? I love enchiladas, so much so that I learned to make them when I was a teenager. So, as Graham family lore retells, I set about crafting Rachelle the best enchiladas I could make. I carefully selected the herbs and spices for the sauce, and then cooked it all day to be sure I had extracted every bit of the excellent flavor of each ingredient. I took the time to carefully select and find just the right cheese. Selected the good corn tortillas and fried them just right—not too soft not too crisp. I wanted these to be the best I could possibly make them (and hopefully impress the pretty girl).

Finally, with no small amount of anxiety, the moment came to present Rachelle with my carefully crafted masterpiece, sourced, created and delivered with an eye to every detail. The result of all my efforts? She loved them! For the next three days she ate nothing but my enchiladas. We just recently celebrated our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. No doubt, my best-I-could-make-them enchiladas are what won her over.

For the Symetrix team, we were equally passionate from the initial conception of our newest product, the xIO XLR-Series, and determined that it was going to be the best we could make it. Our vision was to do our very best at every aspect of the XLR endpoint. Only craft-quality in every detail would satisfy us. Why? Candidly, we feel that it is time for Symetrix to emerge and make a statement about who we are and where we are going. And, we felt that this was an area of the AV system that has lagged behind the rest of the signal path in terms of quality, consequently capping system performance to a sub-standard level. Our goal was to deliver a product that provides a significant increase in performance to support the high-performance sound and life-safety systems they will go into. We view an XLR endpoint as having three areas of focus for performance excellence: Electrical (audio quality), mechanical, and industrial design.

Electrical:

The audio path must deliver the highest performance (laboratory grade) both in subjective listening tests and measured specifications.

Mechanical:

Rugged and refined, all-metal construction that can survive the rigors of commercial application and keep the show going even in extreme circumstances. Further, it must speak strongly to the installer that their needs are understood and special care has been taken to address them.

Industrial design:

The xIO XLR must look brilliant. We want architects and consultants to be proud to have it on the wall in a room they have designed. We hope that design-build integrators are proud to have their personal brands associated with it.

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