by Robert Castro Jr.
When I was a young boy I would sit cross-legged in front of my Radio Shack ten-inch speaker driven by a 1970 Kenwood amplifier with my face just 2 inches away, desperate to feel the most air pressure possible. I would also chain together as many speakers as I could, including car speakers, to create an array in my bedroom. I did not know, technically, what I was doing but I was determined to be surrounded by speakers.
Nearly 20 years later, I work in the audio department for a church that owns a film company. Evidently, dreams do come true because the president of the film company partnered with other audio companies on developing a surround-sound system which consists of about 200 speakers around your head. This beats all my childhood dreams.
Our goal now is to find the perfect-sounding speaker to suit this system. A prophet by the name of Ed Traut was ministering at our church one week. He recommended that our company contact a friend of his who designs speakers. We obeyed the prophet.
A few weeks later, four representatives from WYSIWYG traveled down to San Diego in order to meet this man. As we walked up to a fairly small warehouse, we were greeted by a tall well-dressed German. He took us into one of his warehouses to play a demo of his sub-woofer and flat-panel speakers. As the music comes through the fairly small speakers, we are in awe at the clarity and volume of the flat panel speakers. The massive air pressure from the sub-woofers puts childlike smiles on our faces. We are instantly impressed. These are the perfect speakers for the surround-sound system we are developing for movie theaters.
This gentleman (whose name will not be disclosed) goes on to explain his extreme passion for developing state-of-the-art speakers. He also gave a very impressive list of companies for which he has deigned speakers. We knew we were on a mission from God when the man explained that he is a Christian and that he is tired of his world-class speakers being used for secular material. We confidently told him that our goal for every project we will be doing is to “bring the Presence of God to the people of the world through entertainment”.
After a few hours of a divine visitation, we walked outside into the overcast San Diego weather, hearing fighter jets fly over us from the local military base. As I walked back to the car, I felt a few tears rise up for many reasons. One reason was inspired by the German man’s passion to use his God-given talent for the Lord. The other reason was an overwhelming sense of all my childhood dreams coming back to life. Dreams that only my family knew about. There was also a sense of relief regarding which products to use for the surround-sound system. We could see many prophetic pieces of the puzzle coming together all at once. I felt as though God had resurrected my childhood dreams from the dead and given me a new sense of life.
Robert Castro is a team leader in sound design for WYSIWYG. He has done sound design for “The Roman Trilogy” and has worked on the development of the Sarah DSD location recorder and H. Ghost (WYSIWYG’s wave field synthesis theatrical sound system).
