27 Facts About Bob Cavin

Bob Cavin was chief engineer of McCune Sound in San Francisco in the 1970s, and vice president in the 1980s.

Bob Cavin joined the US Navy in 1958, submitting a perfect score on the armed forces qualification test.

Bob Cavin's rank was Electronics Technician Second Class on the Plunger, where he served as a plankowner, among the first 11 crew members.

In 1964 Bob Cavin started working as chief engineer for McCune Sound in San Francisco; a regional sound company founded in 1932 by Harry McCune.

Bob Cavin supervised the design, production and testing of the company's audio products, and he designed a 16-channel stereo mixing console used at Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Bob Cavin implemented a unity-sum crossover circuit that did not require flipping the polarity of adjacent passband drivers as was common at the time, and he modified the Crown DC-Series amplifiers to allow low-impedance loads of multiple drivers in parallel.

Also for Beatlemania, Bob Cavin modified the Electro-Voice 1776 vocal microphones to have less distortion by rebiasing the internal FET and changing the output capacitor.

Bob Cavin led the McCune engineering team in creating the MM-4, the first mixing console intended solely for stage monitors.

In 1976, Bob Cavin headed the design of the McCune SM-3 2-way loudspeaker, again using a zero-sum crossover, and incorporating a compression driver design patented by Meyer, its phenolic diaphragm modified to yield higher compliance.

Meyer assisted in time-aligning the two passbands, with Bob Cavin determining that the SM-3 sounded more pleasing when the high frequencies were slightly ahead of the lows, a conclusion reached independently by Don Pearson, sound engineer for the Grateful Dead.

In 1977, Bob Cavin supervised the development of the McCune SM-4 2-way coaxial loudspeaker, based on the classic Altec 604E but with a low frequency driver extensively reworked by Kadar to deliver higher power, and fitted with Meyer's more compliant high frequency compression driver.

Bob Cavin designed an active all-pass network to time-align the passbands, slightly delaying the low frequencies to match the highs.

Bob Cavin chose a bucket-brigade delay to align the high frequency drivers about 1.5 milliseconds back from the mids and lows.

Bob Cavin designed a noise gate for the JM-10 processing to stop the high frequency hiss when no signal was present.

Bob Cavin put a one-amp fuse across the electrical ground to make certain that musicians would be protected from electrocution in case of electrical fault.

Bob Cavin toured and provided technical support for Burt Bacharach in the 1970s, including dates in South America 1978, with Harry McCune Jr mixing and Terry Simmons on the crew.

Bob Cavin flew to Bacharach shows in the Philippines in 1981, and other dates in Reno, Las Vegas, and more.

Bob Cavin was put in charge of the company's new computer rental division.

Bob Cavin remained working for McCune until 1992 when he signed on as chief engineer with Apogee Sound.

At Apogee Sound, Bob Cavin designed or improved many products, including the following:.

Bob Cavin joined Furman Sound in 2000 as director of engineering under new company president Gary Kephart, who had been the previous chief engineer.

Bob Cavin developed a four-stage power conditioning system trademarked as SMP+ which was integrated into Furman's popular line of rackmountable power conditioners.

Bob Cavin married Carolyn Ann Jones on December 28,1964, at Transfiguration Episcopal Church in San Mateo.

Bob Cavin moved to San Rafael where he married Patricia St John in October 1986, in a ceremony involving the San Rafael Yacht Club, with a floating procession to the wedding reception.

Bob Cavin was a fleet captain of the San Rafael Yacht Club, and raced his Catalina 27 named Trifle.

Bob Cavin lived in Novato for many years, then moved to Sonoma.

Bob Cavin liked to go fishing; in 1967 he caught a 150-pound sturgeon in the San Francisco Bay off the north side of Tiburon Peninsula, after an hour-long struggle using 18-pound test line intended for striped bass.