From Rock Band Roadie to ‘Ultimate’ Earphone Inventor
Jerry and Mindy Harvey Have Transformed Listening for
Rock Stars & Consumers Alike

LAS VEGAS --- Jerry Harvey was traveling as a sound engineer with multi-platinum rock band Van Halen in 1995 when drummer Alex Van Halen complained that the earpiece he was using to hear himself and his bandmates on stage wasn’t worth the price of one of his drumsticks. Several months later, Harvey and his then-wife Mindy went into business under the name “Ultimate Ears” with a deluxe in-ear monitor featuring special two-driver engineering for better sound reproduction plus custom fabrication from silicone impressions of the wearer’s ears to ensure a precise fit.

Today Jerry, Mindy and team have built Ultimate Ears into a thriving company with an impressive 80% market share for in-ear personal monitors. The Las Vegas-based firm supplies earpieces costing up to $950 per pair to a Who’s Who of performers ranging from Celine Dion, The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson and Metallica to Avril Lavigne, Madonna, Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil and U2.

In early 2004, the company branched out to the consumer market with new earphones specifically designed to be used with iPods and other MP3 players as well as DVD players, notebook computers and home audio systems. These new $550 models utilize the same technology and custom-molded design as Ultimate Ears’ professional devices but are specially tuned to optimize the sound of mastered music.

The result: crispness and detail that let wearers hear every note, word, lick and chord as clearly as if they were standing in the studio with Linkin Park, Green Day or Shaggy.

Designer earphones: Jerry Harvey had been a professional front-of-house and monitor sound engineer for 15 years, mixing the sound during live performances by the likes of k.d.lang and KISS, when Van Halen’s discontent caused him to add the jobs of inventor and entrepreneur to his resumé.

At the time, in-ear monitors had begun to replace or complement floor-based wedge monitors to help band members remain in sync during a performance. Earpieces enabled artists to move more freely as well as hear the sound mix without having their personal wedge speaker blaring in their direction at potentially dangerous volumes, but the early in-ear products had poor sound quality and a poor fit that exacerbated the audio problem.

“I wanted the best custom ear molds available to provide comfort as well as a tight fit to block out extraneous noise and thereby preserve the artist’s hearing by allowing volumes to stay relatively low,” recalls Jerry Harvey, now 43. “I also wanted to deliver better audio quality than existing products, so I incorporated two speakers in each ear with a crossover mechanism to ensure that both low and high frequencies would be heard. No one had done that before.”

Initially he gave his new earpieces away to the artists he was working with, but Mindy Harvey knew a business opportunity when she saw one. She convinced Jerry to turn his invention into a commercial venture, quit her job selling Canon copiers, and became his administrative, sales and marketing department rolled into one. Although the Harvey’s are no longer married, they remain a strong and united business team, with Mindy serving as president and Jerry concentrating on product development.

“The company has more than doubled revenues every year strictly by selling to the artist community, and we expect to hit those numbers again in 2004, in part because of our entry into the consumer market,” says Mindy Harvey. “The explosion in digital music has opened up a whole new sales channel for us among audiophiles, but we didn’t realize it until someone handed Jerry an iPod.”

iPod inspiration: The “someone” was a production assistant with rap-metal sensation Linkin Park. Jerry had never seen an iPod before and didn’t know what it was. As soon as the assistant showed him how Apple’s digital music player worked, he plugged in his own earpieces and immediately heard a new market singing in his ears.

“A guy from Linkin Park’s sound crew introduced me to people in Apple’s professional audio division, and I flew out to Cupertino to fit 30 Apple executives and employees with one of our professional earpiece models,” he says. “They were blown away, and that’s when I knew my instincts were right. I went to work designing a special earpiece tailored to the needs of mastered music instead of live performance.”

That model, the Ultimate Ears UE-5c, became available for sale in January 2004 alongside the company’s existing products for professional performers. As is the case with those products, each pair is handcrafted from ear impressions made by a professional audiologist or hearing center in a 10-minute process, is available in any color, and ships in roughly seven business days.

The custom fit minimizes external noise and also prevents the falling-out problem that is common with other headphones, even during long jogging or weightlifting sessions, while the two-speaker-per-ear design separates high and low frequencies to deliver a bonanza of sound --- much of it not discernible before --- straight to the ear canal.

As if that weren’t enough, the wearer can pretend to be Pink, Seal, Ashanti, or any of the hundreds of other stars who swear by their Ultimate Ears. It’s a pricey fantasy, but look at it this way: it costs less than being on “American Idol.”