Our story

Audyssey has a deep heritage in audio innovation and research with roots that reach back to the golden era of hi-fi. It was founded based on research led by audio industry legend and innovator Tomlinson Holman and audio signal processing researcher and pioneer Chris Kyriakakis, both professors at USC.

Our goal is to create innovative technologies and products that reproduce sound as close as possible to the real thing: a live performance, a studio recording, or a movie in a great theater.

The company was created as a spinoff from the most advanced audio research facility in the world: the Immersive Audio Laboratory at the University of Southern California. Many years and millions of dollars of research funds were used to develop a thorough understanding of the fundamental concepts behind acoustics, psychoacoustics, and sound reproduction.

The first Audyssey groundbreaking technology was released in home theater receivers in 2004. It solved one of the most critical problems in sound reproduction: the negative effects of room acoustics. Since then, Audyssey has delivered several innovative audio technologies that overcome acoustical limitations in audio systems and better match human perception. Products with these technologies are used by millions of people today in their home theaters, televisions, and cars. We are inspired when we hear from our customers who tell us about “never before having this kind of experience with sound”. We think we are just getting started.

Management team

Prof. Tomlinson Holman | Chief Scientist

With over 40 years of audio industry experience, Prof. Tomlinson Holman served as Chief Engineer of Henry Kloss' Advent Corporation, founded Apt Corporation (maker of the Apt/Holman Preamplifier), and has written three books on audio. For his work at Lucasfilm Ltd in developing the THX Sound System, Holman won an Academy Award®. He has also won many other major industry awards including the Masaru Ikuba award of IEEE for consumer electronics, the Silver Medal of the Audio Engineering Society, and fellowships or honorary memberships in six societies. He is currently Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the Viterbi School of Engineering.

Prof. Chris Kyriakakis | Chief Technology Officer

Prof. Chris Kyriakakis is a Professor of Audio Signal Processing at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering. He is the founder and Director of the USC Immersive Audio Laboratory and has authored two books and more than 100 journal and conference publications. In 2006 he was the winner of the World Technology Network award for his work in immersive media. His expertise is in the areas of immersive audio signal processing, microphone arrays for robust sound localization, multichannel audio streaming over high bandwidth networks, virtual microphones for multichannel audio synthesis, high fidelity multichannel audio coding, and multiple listener room equalization.

Dr. Sunil Bharitkar, Ph.D. | Vice President of Research

Dr. Sunil Bharitkar, Ph.D. has published over 50 technical papers on digital equalization of room acoustics and audio signal processing, including his award-winning paper on the influence of reverberation on multi-position equalization performance. He co-authored the textbook Immersive Audio Signal Processing, published by Springer. As a co- founder, his room equalization and signal cancellation research at both USC and Audyssey, has resulted in several patented or patent- pending co-inventions. He is a frequent reviewer and lecturer for various IEEE journals and conferences, the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and Signal Processing from EURASIP. His research background includes signal processing, pattern recognition, acoustics, speech and audio processing, and auditory perception.

Philip Hilmes | Vice President of Engineering

Philip Hilmes is a graduate of Harvey Mudd College. As a co-founder, his expertise in systems engineering brought him to head the Audyssey efforts in implementing breakthrough audio technologies into an ever- increasing range of professional and consumer audio products. Hilmes has held engineering positions in communications and digital entertainment at DIRECTV, where he created technology increasing the amount of data transmittable through limited bandwidth, thus augmenting the number of channels that can be transmitted through existing broadcast satellites. He has three pending patents.

Michael Solomon | Chief Executive Officer

Michael Solomon built his career over the past 30 years as an entrepreneur in the audio and computer industries, a software and computer industry executive, and a venture capitalist. He worked with Apple computer through his own business to set up Apple's early dealer network in the early 1980's, was the original sales and marketing VP of Aldus, the creators of PageMaker software which spawned the desktop publishing industry, worked in Venture Capital as a partner at Mohr, Davidow Ventures during the late 1990's, and served on the Boards of several successful companies as well as being CEO or founder of three other ventures along the way. He joined Audyssey in December 2004 as CEO, thereby, connecting the dots in his career to his first job as a retail audio sales person while in school.

Neal Osterhaus | Vice President of Finance and Operations

Neal Osterhaus holds a Bachelor's in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and earned his MBA from the University of Rochester's Simon School of Business. Most recently Neal was a deal leader in the Global Mergers and Acquisitions group for GE Energy, GE's largest industrial business with $19 billion of revenues in 2006. Neal began his career as a graduate of the United States Navy's Nuclear Power Program with six years of subsequent service in the Submarine Force on the Ballistic Missile Submarine USS Alaska. He joined Audyssey in March 2008 bringing focus, discipline and leadership to the operations of our company.

John Hallman | Vice President of Business Development

John joins the Audyssey team bringing 15 years of business development and strategic planning experience in the audio and digital video/film industry. Most recently John led business development efforts for Motorola’s video and mobile television partner team. Prior to Motorola, John was director of strategic planning for Lucasfilm THX where he led corporate development and strategic partnerships for the home theater and digital cinema markets. During his tenure at THX, John founded and served on the board of directors for the THX Best Practices Laboratory for Windows Media—a non-profit technology and education center in partnership with Microsoft. John earned his MBA and Bachelors of Science in Microbiology from California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo.