The Emergency Adapters are a curated set of audio adapters meant to handle most audio emergencies. When you have a cable with one plug and a jack that is meant for another, the Emergency Adapters serve as a “first aid kit” that provides the missing pieces in solving an equipment-and-audio-cable puzzle.
The Essential Edition meets the most common needs and the Professional Edition has more specialized adapters for a wider variety of applications.
It’s 10pm and you’re setting up to play your gear for your live PA performance at a club when you realize the breakout boxes and the cables leading from your modular synth and laptop don’t interface at all. It’s way past brick-and-mortar hours, and you need a solution now!
Luckily you have this “first aid kit” for electronic musicians: Emergency Adapters. Crisis averted!
Electronic musician and DJ Liz McLean Knight came up with the idea for the kit when she noticed many of her fellow performers were terrified when they didn’t have the right audio adapters needed to play at a gig. Coming to their rescue, she lent them her adapters from her personal stash stored in a headphone bag. Realizing how useful her collection of adapters were, she designed a package to resemble a medical first aid kit, ordered the components, assembled the kits, and sold them on her website and to retailers.
When the first version sold out, it was time to address some issues. First, the price was too high for people who didn’t see the value in the added cost of the specialized adapters. But removing them would make the kit less useful for those who needed the additional functionality of the professional adapters. Liz decided to split the adapters into two versions for different types of users.
Secondly, the “headphone bag” design made it hard to quickly locate the right adapter, and dumping it out on the floor risked losing pieces. Liz designed a case with clear pockets to show the location of adapters easily. To allow upgrades in the future, a modular design would allow an owner of the Essential Edition to add the Professional Leaf at a later date, as well as allow removal of the Leaf to store cables or other parts inside instead, fully zippered and secure.
However there were issues
Because the case was just a bag, it was hard to quickly locate the right adapter without dumping out the bag and potentially losing adapters. It needed to be better.
Secondly, the more specialized adapters like XLR added quite a bit of cost to the parts, and not every one understood the additional cost. So it was decided to split it into two editions. One had the basics at a more approachable price, the Essential Edition, and the original became the Professional Edition. And to allow upgrades in the future, a modular design would allow an owner of the Essential Edition to add the Professional Leaf at a later date, as well as allow removal of the Leaf to store cables or other parts inside instead, fully zippered and secure.
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