NUMARK ELECTRONICS JOINS FORCES WITH AUDIOSYNTRAC

Numark Electronics Company believed in the future of Scott Ebright’s concept of AudioSynTrac (AST) in the 1970’s. Owner/President President Harry Kotovsky agreed to adapt Ebright’s designs and build the $220,000 prototype AudioSynTrac music machine for mass production and world-wide distribution. As CEO and President of the venture-capital company AudioSynTrac, Ebright went into production recording all the music software for use in AST machines. A major marketing plan was next conceived and implemented to distribute AST products to a world-wide market.
The first phase of the AST singing machine actually consisted of three proprietary inventions.

1. Speed of standard Nakamichi cassette tape transports was increased to 5 ips (inches per second) from the standard 3.25 ips 
2. Key of songs had needed to be variable by a manual button - without changing song speed  
3. A digital vocal processor needed to be invented that would encompass all microphone effects for singers (echo, repeat, chorus doubling, and flanging)
   

HARRY KOTOVSKY REBUFFS JAPAN SPIES in public at CES Show

After demonstrating this prototype equipment with live cabaret singers in Las Vegas and Chicago CES trade shows, Japanese electronics companies sent representatives to spy on and photograph the AudioSynTrac concept. Ebright recalls when Harry Kotovsky (Numark owner)  lunged forward  in front of him while he was singing an Elvis song. It was Harry's way to block the camera spies from Japan  taking close-up, detailed photos of the AST prototype machine. Harry bent his entire tall body over at the waist as he stretched out both palms wide open in front of the AST machine. He did that to block camera views of the newly engineered design. Scott wasn't flustered by this distraction and kept right on singing "I Can't Help Falling in Love". Meanwhile the large crowd that had gathered to watch Scott's live demo all witnessed this despicable pirate attempt by Japan spies. As Harry made that overt blocking move, he loudly announced:

• “If you want to steal this machine, then buy it first and go back to Japan to take pictures of it!"
• Both photographers got looked shocked and embarrassed as they quickly exited the scene.  

But this brazen act signaled the beginning of the end. It took only three months for Japanese electronic companies to begin promoting their own copy-cat singing machines called Karaoke. Heavyweight companies like Pioneer and Matsushita Corporation invested $10 million dollars into an escrow "war chest" designed as an offensive weapon against AST.  Ultimately, this action forced AudioSynTrac Corporation and Numark Corporation to abandon ship on their joint project. AudioSynTrac officially closed down by 1984 and declared major losses and three million shares of Scott Ebright’s preferred stock became worthless overnight (see photo of stock certificate below). 

With Ebright's permission, Numark was able to recoup their R&D costs by selling separate components of the  newly patented electronics.  Two proprietary inventions by Numark were based upon Scott Ebright's insistence that the singing mixer and needed to include these revolutionary new features: 

• A digital echo and chorus doubling effect for singers
• A a harmonic key changer of the music that could be adjusted up or down in half step song keys.  

Click here to read link verifying inventor of Karaoke:  IT Business News

AST Invented the VERY FIRST electronic REVERB and KEY CHANGER! Scott requested that specific electronic functions were designed and requested to be part of the AST machine design. Ebright demanded that a computer chip be invented that would serve the functions of reverb and changing the key of any song by precisely half-step intervals (sharps and flats). These inventions literally took six months of development by Numark’s top electronics whiz kid: Mr. Ikezawa from Japan.  These functions were proprietary, thus NUMARK’s engineering team created THE WORLD"S FIRST digital reverb and a digital harmonic key changer that maintained the speed of a song while raising or lowering the key. 

Numark’s success increased with inventing more audio equipment for the fast growing Disc Jockey market as well as singers and live entertainers. In this way, Harry Kovtosky came out ahead and a winner. He told Scott, "Scotty, I went into this whole idea with one eye looking ahead on how I could recoup my investment. So I designed the digital reverb and digital key changer to be sold as a separate electronic component that can be plugged into any brand of audio mixer."  He did just that and sold his electronic inventions to manufacturers throughout the electronics world. And as AudioSynTrac fell victim to the rip off by Asian companies, Ebright was left holding massive reels recording studio master tapes that were suddenly useless. (Many songs from these tapes are posted on this website at the bottom of the previous page, Ebright Invented Karaoke. He chalked up the whole experience as an enormous life lesson learned. "Never again will I try to invent any type of product. Asian knock off pirates are stealing trillions of dollars from honest inventors that deserve to be paid. And no one in the world has the muscle or teeth to stop them."

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