In an Oral History video recorded by Dr Rodney Staples, Paul describes having an early interest in electronics from reading the correspondence course materials bought home from his father’s work. In high school, he put this interest to work by servicing equipment from a nearby electronics store, and rebuilding discarded electronic devices.
Paul’s choice of university and course was to create for him the broadest scope for following his interests. After working in the disciplined environment of a defence organisation, he decided to follow his interest and start the first of his many businesses designing a diverse range of products including RF systems, MIDI interfaces and other analogue and digital devices.
Following another of his interests, he entered the film industry where he worked in development and production, and learned the process of starting, operating and closing an entrepreneurial business.
His last foray into working in large organisations was to restart the engineering department for M-Audio, eventually adding Digidesign’s hardware team to the mix, ultimately under the Avid umbrella.
After leaving Avid, Paul started a business manufacturing audio test equipment, followed by several other businesses generally in the field of mixed-mode electronics, often for high-performance recording studio audio products.
Since moving to Melbourne, Australia several years ago, Paul has continued to design bespoke high-end professional audio equipment with his company Glassworks Audio.
Paul’s advice for those aspiring to enter the audio industry is to find interesting challenges, regardless of experience, and figure out how to solve them. This gives confidence and problem-solving skills that are indispensable.
Here is an extract from the Oral History video Paul recently recorded:
This extract can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGo7fgyssR8
The full video can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/94CvLKp0DYc?si=s3y0IX48cB6_5dWo