October 16, 2018—Lynn McCroskey, founder of Sonics, the company that originated the IMAX sound system and manufactured the audio hardware for IMAX theaters worldwide, passed away on September 22 in Birmingham, Alabama. His dear friend and colleague Alvis Wales delivered the following memorial at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham during GSCA’s Dome Day presentation on September 24. Our sincere condolences to Lynn’s family, friends, and colleagues.

 

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In Memory of Lynn McCroskey
Delivered to GSCA Conference at McWane Science Center Omnimax Theater
by Alvis Wales – September 24, 2018

Good morning. Thank you, for giving me the honor and opportunity to share a few words about my friend and colleague Lynn McCroskey, who passed away two days ago a few blocks from here at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Lynn was my friend for more than 40 years and my business partner at Sonics and Oxmoor for 20 of those years.

Lynn was a risk taker, because he knew that without risk, the reward couldn’t be as… well, rewarding! He started Sonics here in Birmingham in 1971 (47 years ago) with Jim Cawthon, a high school friend, as a summer job repairing guitar amplifiers. They then moved into selling and installing sound systems (then called “PA’s”) for churches and small bands. Lynn was the salesman and designer, and Jim was the guy that installed it and kept it running.

In 1981 Lynn took a big risk and bid on the sound systems for the Omnimax theaters in Huntsville and Ft. Worth for Mike Sullivan, the theater consultant we remembered last week. Of course, Lynn did not really know much about IMAX at the time. But Sonics won the bids anyway, and that was the start of Sonics in the IMAX industry.

In 1984, Lynn convinced me to take a risk and abandon a career as an acoustics and sound engineer and join him and Jim as a partner in that small sound company in Birmingham—Sonics. I might have been a little nuts to do that, but Lynn and I shared a commitment to quality, and I had confidence in his ability to lead us to accomplish some special things ...and that we did! My first week at Sonics, back in 1985, Lynn said, “Check your passport. We are going to Edmonton the end of the month, for the STC meeting.” I said, “What is STC?” He told me about the Space Theater Consortium, now GSCA.

Here are some of the things you may or may not know about Lynn and Sonics. Sonics’ insistence on sound quality was comparable to IMAX’s pursuit of visual quality. That emphasis on quality caught the attention of Graeme Ferguson and the other owners of IMAX. So by 1988, Sonics was essentially IMAX’s sound subsidiary. We designed, built, and calibrated all the IMAX sound systems worldwide. Our view at Sonics was that sound was 50% of the IMAX experience—at least—with the picture the other 50%! Of course, the folks in Toronto would not publicly agree with that percentage, but they did agree it was a really big part.  

Lynn’s vision and his inventor nature led to Sonics developing the first successful digital sound system in the cinema world. Yes, we beat DTS, Dolby, and Sony to that goal. Lynn was also the inventor of the TAC, PSE, DDP, DFP, DEQ, and DTAC. If those of you who are relative newcomers don’t know what all those acronyms stand for, just ask David Keighley or me—or any number of people here with gray and/or missing hair. Lynn received an SMPTE award for the design of our first Theater Audio Controller (TAC-86) and a patent on PSE (our 3D sound system).

And Sonics, under Lynn’s leadership, developed a Theater Automation System and a Pre-Show that ran for years here at McWane and in many other Omnimax theaters, now called IMAX Dome. (It was the music from that pre-show that you heard right before this session began. They couldn’t show the visuals, because the slide projectors don’t work anymore, and you can’t buy parts or replacements for them.)

During the early filming of The Dream is Alive, Lynn advised Bill Shaw on ways to pick up decent audio inside the space shuttle cabin. (For those of you who don’t know the details of IMAX history, Bill was one of the IMAX founders and was IMAX’s Senior VP of Engineering and designer of the original IMAX Projector.

After we sold Sonics to IMAX in the late 90’s, Lynn spun off Oxmoor Corp and developed ZON, a whole-house consumer audio system. Then after Oxmoor, he started Twist Technology, an AV design and installation company, with his son Kevin. Lynn told me that he probably would have just kicked back in retirement, except that Kevin had lots of new ideas that he wanted to try with Twist—thereby creating another innovating and risk-taking McCroskey!

It’s particularly appropriate for us to celebrate Lynn here at McWane Center, in his hometown. Lynn’s wife, Jennifer, was heavily involved with one of the two small museums here that merged to form what is now McWane Center. Because of that and Lynn’s resulting connections, Sonics had a very good working relationship with McWane, using this theater as a test bed for several new products, such the DTAC, our theater automation system, and other products.

Finally, Lynn had a great wit, always having a good joke or two and always being very quick with a funny response to most any situation. My favorite Lynn story happened in 1999, just after we sold Sonics to IMAX. We had a company meeting to explain how things would change with the new ownership situation. We had most of our employees here in Birmingham, but we also had employees in Paris, Tokyo, Singapore, Ft. Worth, and Denver—all joining in by conference call. After Lynn explained how insurance, benefits, and travel policies would change to be comparable to IMAX’s, he opened the floor to questions. After several local questions, one employee in Denver piped up and asked, “Will we now get all the Canadian holidays too?” Lynn’s very quick answer was, “Absolutely, if you are willing to take your salary in Canadian dollars!” Of course, the Canadian dollar was worth about 30% less than the US dollar at that time! Lynn was that quick! There were no more questions about holidays!

To give you a final example of Lynn’s wit, his brother Mike looked through Lynn’s laptop yesterday and found two pictures of Lynn for me to use here. Lynn had labeled one of those pictures “Old Goat.” So, here’s to the “Old Goat.”

In closing, if it hadn’t been for Lynn, I would certainly not be involved in this industry, so I owe him a lot for that and many other things. There’s also a good chance that high-quality sound would not have become such a big part of the IMAX Experience so early without his influence and drive. In my opinion, Lynn was the essential part of establishing IMAX Sound as the best sound in cinema.

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to share a brief moment of memorial. Lynn, his humor, and his vision will be missed.