Community Highlights: Meet Kris Kaiser and Stephen McCaul of Noise Engineering

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kris Kaiser and Stephen McCaul.

Hi Kris and Stephen, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
We met in 2007 and bonded over our shared interest in audio, though we had very different approaches. We both had musical backgrounds, but Stephen ended up as a software engineer with a focus on audio, and Kris ended up as a biologist with a focus on bioacoustics. We got married a few years later, but at some point realized that with the hours we worked, heading in opposite directions each morning, with Kris traveling frequently for work, we hardly saw each other.

Sort of as a distraction in this time, and a way to spend time not on the computer, Stephen had started designing Eurorack modules after a close friend got a system. The first module was meant for our friend but turned into a product. That led to more products, and then, in 2016, we agreed to walk away from everything we knew and try to make this hobby into our lives. We made a lot of spreadsheets, bought a house, quit our jobs, and hoped for the best.

Six years later, we have seven incredible, smart people on the team and global distribution of our products. We’ve added to the team slowly with members spread out across three time zones. We’re still a bit obscure, but we like to joke that if you watched TV in 2022, you probably heard our products.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In so many ways, we have been extremely lucky: we tried this wild experiment at just the right time in the Eurorack market. We have had great contract manufacturing partners from the start who have helped us grow and who have been integral to our success. Our team has been incredible: we have five people in addition to us who really help make everything happen.

But nothing is simple.

Starting to do this together was a struggle while we figured out our roles. Stephen was used to doing everything and had to make room for Kris; this is hard, even with someone who shares your vision! Kris was used to being the expert on her small niche of bioacoustics knowledge and had to go from that to knowing literally nothing about her job: she took over most of the hardware design, including schematic and PCB design, and also the business and finance side of the company. She had no experience with any of this and it was all on-the-job learning. It was an uphill road but definitely the best choice as it freed Stephen up to do more programming, which allowed us to play to our real strengths.

These days, our struggles are a bit different. It’s no longer just the two of us, so there are complexities of having a remote team in several states. The pandemic has brought havoc to our industry with parts shortages, shipping slowdowns, and price increases on virtually everything we source. We’ve also got a massive list of things we want to do, but also recognize the limitations on our bandwidth so we just have an impossibly long backlog of projects.

Still, we are really happy and realize that we are so incredibly fortunate to be where we are with the team we have.

We’ve been impressed with Noise Engineering, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Noise Engineering creates electronic instruments that are easy to use and fun to play right out of the box. Our synths produce a wide range of sounds perfect for creating relaxing ambient vibes, heavy-hitting techno madness, and everything in between. If you make music, we want to make tools for you to do it.

Our core values inform everything we do here. Our team is a nerdy group of musicians and we challenge ourselves to design only products that excite us — products that we want to use in our own music-making. We help each other with every step of the process of bringing those products into the world. We are deeply committed to education and outreach; we believe that it’s our job to help someone get the best experience out of our instruments! We host workshops and other training for community members and maintain a comprehensive blog with content for all levels of users.

We realized that our hardware was difficult for people in many places to access: it is expensive and some parts of the world include tariffs that virtually double the price. We chose to create lower-cost software versions that are more accessible to anyone, anywhere.

And, in part because of Kris’s biology background, we have a strong ethos of sustainability and conservation. We have done several conservation campaigns tied to our products, with more planned. A portion of the proceeds from various products go to endangered animal conservation.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
We were both total nerds. We both wrote something about our childhood interests and then laughed at how similar they were. We each loved science, the outdoors and were obsessed with music. Stephen played in the school orchestra while Kris lugged her DX7 (a famous Yamaha keyboard) up and down the stairs and out to piano lessons every week. We were both phenomenally bored with school. Kris was always curious about the electronic gadgetry her older brother brought home but tended to focus more on the natural sciences: stuck at home with chicken pox in first grade, she skipped her homework and designed and did a behavioral study on squirrels in the yard. Stephen was an Eagle Scout, so he did a bit of everything. We diverged a bit as we got older: Stephen got interested in computers, software, and engineering. Kris remained interested in animals, although we were both still deeply interested in music. Kris was torn about whether to go to college for biology or music engineering/production. Stephen ended up a math major. Both of our college careers were pretty circuitous, in part because we were both bored so easily.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://noiseengineering.us/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noiseeng/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noiseeng/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/noiseeng
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTa3nl2XQR3v_BobASbKPUQ

Image Credits
Anthony Acosta Eric “Rodent” Cheslak