Audyssey Laboratories was conceived at the prestigious Immersive Audio Laboratory at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Sunil Bharitkar, Philip Hilmes, Prof. Tomlinson Holman, and Prof. Chris Kyriakakis were all involved in conceiving and creating the technology that was the basis for "spinning out" the company in July, 2002.
In late 1996, after a fierce competition among 117 universities, the National Science Foundation established a unique research center at USC that focused on immersive technologies. A key component of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) is the Immersive Audio Laboratory that was founded by Chris Kyriakakis and Tomlinson Holman. Over the past 10 years Tom and Chris have conducted research in audio signal processing, acoustics, and psychoacoustics. The results of their interdisciplinary research have been published in more than 100 technical journal publications and several books. One of the most challenging problems that they addressed was the comprehensive understanding of the negative effects of room acoustics on sound reproduction. It took 5 years of intense research and experimentation and more than $6M in research funds to fully understand and solve this intricate problem. No other facility in the world had the scientific expertise and the resources to fundamentally examine and solve this problem.
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. 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 & audio processing, and auditory perception.
Philip Hilmes Vice President of Engineering
Philip Hilmes is a graduate of Harvey Mudd College. Philip Hilmes' expertise in systems engineering brought him to head Audyssey's effort implementing breakthrough audio technologies into an ever-increasing range of professional and consumer audio products. Hilmes has held engineering positions in communications & 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.
Prof. Tomlinson Holman Chief Scientist
With over 35 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 is currently professor of film sound at the USC School of Cinema & Television.
Prof. Chris Kyriakakis Chief Technology Officer
Prof. Chris Kyriakakis is Associate Professor of Audio Signal Processing at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering. He is founder and Director of USC Immersive Audio Laboratory, and Deputy Director of the Integrated Media Systems Center, a National Science Foundation research center. He has authored two books and more than 100 journal and conference publications. 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.
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, 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 Business Development 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.