Interview: Kane Zhang, EZ Pro

• Features

• 15/03/2022

Like many, Kane Zhang got his start in AV at an early age. He details: “I started my career in AV when I was 16, which now seems like a very long time ago, in China. I was lucky enough to have the chance to get access to a mixing console, a simple one with eight channels to a track, but I still remember it.

This started my journey and made me fall in love with audio.” Once introduced to the world of AV, Zhang felt himself pulled in and he continues: “As I worked in the AV industry, I gained experience and branched out into lighting systems and more complex sound systems. When I graduated from university, I continued on my path in AV and eventually set up my own company that was renting audio equipment.”

Zhang experienced success and growth with his endeavours and it seemed like his path was set. However, the desire to continue growing brought him to a challenging spot. He explains: “Around the year 2000 I had gotten to a plateau in my career in China. I had realised that when it came to the biggest jobs and the biggest shows, no more than the four of the best people were invited to participate. If you happened to be the fifth best in the industry, you wouldn’t even get a chance. Your level of experience and expertise didn’t matter because the perception around ‘the best’ had already been set in the market. On top of that, I saw the trend of hardware prices crashing down year on year. I just felt that I was unable to progress and go to a higher level.”

Feeling like he had hit a wall, Zhang decided to make a change. He says: “I found myself confused and not knowing what the future was going to be. I wanted to succeed as a ‘soundman’ but I just didn’t see a way forward. But I was lucky enough to be able to go to the UK where I took time to cool down and seriously consider what the future might hold. It was there that I saw something called a DSP and instantly my mind began telling me that there was a new way to manipulate sound. You didn’t have to work with a mixing console all the time, you could learn programming and with a DSP you could set the system up for a specific application. But I knew I needed more knowledge.”

The desire to learn Zhang highlights spurred him on and he says: “I bought my first computer in the UK. I didn’t even know how to turn the computer on. And it didn’t come with a network card, so I had to spend extra money to buy the right PCI card and slot it in because my friend told me I had to ‘go online’ whatever that meant. The internet opened up a whole new world for me. It was a great avenue for learning and acquiring new skills. If you knew how to ask the right questions, you would always find the answers.”

The next big transformation in Zhang’s career happened when he moved forward again. He details: “I went to Canada and actually moved into the integration segment, which was an eyeopener for me. On the integration side, I realised that AV doesn’t only solve a problem, you are actually building an application for the client. When I was in the rental and staging business, the end goal was always the same which was to deliver the best possible sound. In the world of integration, the end goal is different and depends on the client’s requirements. As an integrator you are building a full system every time.

“My time in integration further made me realise that I needed to understand the full picture. I had to learn the network, I had to learn third-party control and of course I needed to learn video. My exposure to video also made me realise that the world of AV was becoming more and more complicated.”

Zhang found himself witnessing the start of AV and IT’s convergence and as it progressed, he began to once again see that it was time for the industry to evolve. He preached: “As things went on the network, I realised that AV needed a new way to think. In my opinion, the difference between AV and IT stems from how we interact and troubleshoot our systems. With AV, if there is a failure point, we feel that we have to go out and find the physical point of failure in the signal chain. With IT, the concept of the signal chain is more abstract. IT thinks in it terms of endpoints and if there is a failure that means that the endpoints are not communicating. Their instinct is to start checking IP addresses and network settings. Of course, this is a simplification, but I feel that to be successful AV needed to be able to learn and adopt IT’s methodologies and way of thinking.”

Zhang returned to Asia and served as application engineer for Biamp. The role once again helped him grow and improve as he states: “I think my main job was to convince people and this is what I learned during my time at Biamp. You can convince people by making friends, sharing experiences and having better relationships. But I found that in order to really convince them, you have to take them out of their comfort zone and then prove to them that you can provide value. I learned how to push people and convince them of change by understanding their needs and the markets they operate in.”

At present Zhang is the chief technology officer at Chinese AV provider EZ Pro, where he is leading the transformation of the company as the entire AV industry goes through another metamorphosis. With AV over IP becoming a mature, developed solution and the pandemic bringing about a completely new set of requirements imposed upon technology, Zhang is using his experiences and expertise to guide EZ Pro towards success.

Throughout his career and his journey, it seems that Zhang has been adept at spotting the ‘next big thing’ before it arrived, arming himself with the requisite knowledge, riding the wave and moving forward with the times.

This begs the important question of what direction does he think the AV industry is headed in next?

Zhang answers: “The whole AV industry doesn’t talk to each other and that is the biggest problem. If you look at the IT industry, from the beginning they have had strong regulatory bodies such as IEEE and this means that everything has been standardised. If you make an IT product today, you have to follow the standards, and this ensures that Cisco switches can talk to Huawei switches and vice versa and so on. It ensures interoperability from the start.

“Compare that to the AV industry and it is just confusion, and I am not seeing any improvements when it comes to standardisation. But this will have to change because it isn’t in line with consumer behaviour. We’ve seen this in action with videoconferencing and the trend of BYOD and now BYOM. You can’t restrict the device or the platform that users want to use and basically, we have seen technology systems evolve accordingly. I believe that eventually AV will have to standardise in order to make sure that the user gets the best experience.”