The Story

The journey started with one American’s fascination with British HiFi, which turned into curiosity about how we hear and a realization that sound and music is what connects us. We believe that great products come from great data and great data come from accurate measurement.

audio3® is based in London, UK and was founded in 2007 by Bradford Backus who holds a PhD from MIT in speech and hearing sciences, and is an expert in human hearing anatomy, physiology and psychophysics. He studied acoustics with Dr. Amar Bose and worked for Bose Corporation before moving to London to work for Arcam and Fergusson-Hill.

Up to now, the majority of Audio3’s work has been quietly scientific and medical in nature, spanning 19 patents in cochlear implants, the development of low noise measurement amplifier systems to measure minute brain signals evoked by sound (EABR), and designing industrial noise dosimeters.

This speaker system is our first consumer product—a result of 3 years of work on a free-field clinical audiometer system requiring a near flat frequency response and stringent on and off-axis tolerances. The result is a loudspeaker that has logged hours of anechoic chamber testing. We won’t be offended if you call the result ‘clinical’—but we will be surprised. These speakers are full of life. For us, sound reproduction means, eponymously, to make the reproduction so perfect that you can re-live the sound of your favourite concert from your favourite listening chair while adhering to the motto “If you can’t hear it, you won’t pay for it”.

When we set out we knew that audio3 wanted to work with the best British designers and talent in the industry and we have done so since 2007. In that year, audio3 MD Bradford Backus first met Adrian Stokes, the multi-award winning industrial designer of ASA Designers responsible for the now iconic ARCAM designs.

This began a collaboration that has lasted 20 years. Over these years, we operated as team and have fretted, iterated and frustrated each other in search of perfection. We finally landed together on this project with what we both believe is a harmony of what can be achieved sonically while producing what we think will become a timeless design—the perfect juxtaposition of classic against modern. Our uncompromising way of working within our realms of expertise and the attention to detail we both seek in this collaboration, is obvious in our products.