It’s not often that in an audio product development, you get the chance to really ‘let go of the brake’. However, now and then, the pursuit of a single goal is made all-important, and factors such as cost are brushed aside. All project decisions become extremely focused. In the case of the Airsound Spatial Pro Listening System (PLS), the answer was always ‘how can we make it sound better’?
The story behind this project is unique. Having invented Airsound Spatial and created a demonstration system (the black unnamed speakers bearing the logo ‘Airsound Spatial’), with the help of my brother Guy, we set about using some studio time at British Grove Studio 2 to fine-tune the system and align it to the monster ATC system they use as a daily driver. Very quickly, the system came together and started to sound frighteningly close to the Dolby-approved flagship. What happened next was unique – engineers who also happened to be working at the Grove were curious and one or two asked for a quick listen. This snowballed into every person at the Grove coming in to listen and being utterly floored at how we were able to replicate the sound of 11 massive speakers from 4 small ones.
In a memorable moment, Nigel Heath (of Peaky Blinders and Killing Eve fame) exclaimed that in a different time we would have been ‘burned at the stake’ for performing witchcraft!
After the fun and jokes, a serious point became clear. All of these top-flight professionals in the world of Dolby Atmos and 360 audio production had a real NEED for a system that sounded great and could replicate a 7.1.4 soundfield in say.. their home, their studio, their garage… wherever. Normal 7.1.4 just isn’t practical in everyday life. Even these guys at the top of their profession rarely had much opportunity to use a high performance spatial audio space… and our technology seemed to deliver the experience without the fuss.
On the drive home with my father in the passenger seat, we talked it over. We needed to create a beautiful speaker system that utilised our decades of experience of low distortion audio reproduction to the full. Cost didn’t matter… it just needed to sound incredible. It also, in my view, needed to look special… and because cost didn’t matter, we wanted to make everything here in the UK. The small numbers, the exclusivity, the excellence would all add to the charm of this amazing system. A very special audio project was born.
6 months later… here it is… And I am extremely proud of the result. It looks and sounds everything it should be. Yes, it’s really expensive (mainly due to being handmade from solid ash), but this means that every speaker is unique, and the solid construction along with transconductance analogue amplification and specialist drivers as a package make the experience of using it extraordinary.
Being able to singularly chase performance is a special treat (as a product development director). I have only experienced this one other time (in the case of the Orbitsound D1). I know for a fact though that these two products are bang at the top of my list of projects I am most proud of, and will likely be the ones that the people who use them most cherish.
see https://airsound.com for details.
