“There’s real satisfaction in taking in something from the ground up, and seeing people’s faces when they hear the music and it’s right and it sounds like live music. We love music.” In fact, Joy and Joseph Lavrencik (pictured above) of Critical Mass Systems started their company 20 years ago because of their love for music. I had the opportunity to meet and interview Joy at the Florida Audio Expo a few weeks ago.
Racks Do Something
When you walk into a room at an audio show or even into a high-end audio store, racks aren’t usually the first thing you notice. Joy and Joseph Lavrenciks know that. The above picture of Critical Mass racks at the Capital Audiofest 2019 illustrates this point. Now, be honest, what would you notice first?
Joy says, “I think the biggest misnomer about racks or the fact that you even need them is that they are really the foundation of the entire system. So, you can have equipment in any price range and you can put a rack under it, but a Critical Mass rack actually does something. It is engineered scientifically. It will improve that equipment, sometimes ten-fold.”
The something that Critical Mass racks do is make recorded music sound more like a live performance. According to Joy, here’s why they started the company. “We went out and bought what for us at the time were expensive speakers and expensive electronics and took them home. When we set it up, it didn’t sound good at all.” Thinking, “Oh my gosh, we spent all this money” quickly moved to Joseph asking “How can we make this thing sound better?”
Making “it” sound better led to Critical Mass Systems. The company is located in the Chicago area, and while they work with a number of small specialty shops, everything is made in the United States. As you can see from this picture of Joy in her work environment, she really does do a little bit of everything.
Joy, who sold medical equipment and had a background in healthcare, is the president and Joseph is the Vice President. “He did that because he said, I want you to build this with me. I want you to be included in everything,” Joy says. And, she is included in everything. “As a female, when I walk into a machine shop, I get their attention right away. Sometimes I can get them to do things faster than he can.”
Hearing the Stillness
Joseph is, according to Joy, an OCD person, and they just continually improved and improved and worked and worked until they got the sound they were listening for. “When you come into our room,” Joy says, “you will hear the blackness, the stillness in the music.”
“Our products have no coloration whatsoever. They are totally neutral and we worked really hard with the materials and found the materials that wouldn’t put in sounds that aren’t supposed to be there. Taking out that extraneous noise enables you to really hear the emotion in the singer’s voice.” Joy continues, “that’s what we were both chasing, that live, real music sound because we both have it in our heads. I can remember listening to certain songs and music that we had fallen in love with, and I knew there was more music there that we weren’t hearing.”
Critical Mass Technology
There’s a lot behind the Critical Mass technology other than just having a platform to put your equipment on. Joy says they do a good bit of custom work to ensure that their racks suit the tastes of their customers, especially for a Maxum or Olympus rack. “We will and have painted it to match somebody’s Ferrari. That’s the level of customization that we can do.”
Still, Joy admits that it’s frustrating when people think a rack is just something to sit the equipment on. “The rack part itself is important, the materials are important, but the platform that sits on top is really the genius of the science, and I have to say that we have really become experts at materials, science, and engineering that go with audio and that work with electronics because the electronics sit on our stuff and we’re the foundation.”
From suspended boxes filled with sand to a wooden platform, there were many iterations of the filter, which Joy explains is the part that actually sits on the rack and does the work to improve the sound of the system. “I am the ears. I help, I listen. Nothing goes out or gets the stamp of approval until I say that’s it. You’ve got it!” Today, their top of the line OLYMPUS-V12 has 12 damping or filtering stages that burn off energy to mitigate vibration in the floor, the rack, the shelf and the component at the same time.
Electronics and Cables
Electronics come next. “The cables bring them through so you want to keep that signal as clean as you can because you don’t want extra room. The speakers are the voice, but the speakers with all that energy are actually messing with the electronics because they are making them vibrate.”
“The biggest joy for my husband and me is making the feet because they really do something,” she says. “You can get one of these feet for $240 for the smallest one and the biggest one goes up to $695. If you can’t afford a rack, these have the same technology and the same materials as our Olympus rack does.” She admits that it isn’t going to sound as good as the larger racks, but it is affordable for everybody. A rack takes a little time to break in because it actually melds or connects itself to the electronics. Once it’s settled, the energy will flow down through the feet, and you can really hear a big difference, even if you are sitting it on your kitchen table.”
Industry Acceptance
If you look at the Critical Mass website today, it’s easy to see that they are one of the most recognized companies in the industry with awards and reviews galore. Their racks are shipped to customers around the world. And, if you have attended shows in the past couple of years, you’ve probably noticed that Critical Mass products are used in The Ultimate in Sound system put together by The Audio Company. You can read our review of that system at the Florida Audio Expo here.
Like anything new, however, Joy admits it was difficult at first to break into the industry. She says, “That’s another good thing about the audio industry. The people are wonderful.” Judd Barber of Jewel Electric Tube Amps was their mentor and helped them learn the audio show ropes. Barber recognized that they had something special when they built a platform to go under one of his amps.
Joy says these days persuading people that their products do more than just support the equipment is much easier. “We have a couple of dealers that really get it. The easiest way is to take one of the platforms and put a spike under it, and then put two amplifiers on it. We leave it with them for 30 days, and then go back and take it away. They’ve never had a customer want to give them up. They are like instant sales.” The customer often goes on to purchase other Critical Mass products.
An Audio Life
Joy says that every day is different and there is no typical day for her. “My workplace is a variety of places because I interact with a lot of people. It’s all over the place.” One of her favorite things is going to audio shows, even though, “We’re the first people to set up at a show, and the last people to take down.”
And I could really relate when she said, “My husband used to go to the shows by himself, and then I went one year. He told me when we came home that I have to go with him to every show because I talk to people.” Like most of us in the audio ‘biz, her favorite thing about her work is going to a show because she gets to listen and share music with other people who love it.
Lovely to see you Madame President.