LyonSound

Audio - a very brief history of time.

Matthew Lyons — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:42:02 +0000

I am back to Johns Hopkins teaching this semester and really enjoying it. This semester’s class is Audio Science and Technology, one of my favorites. We review core technologies in audio from acoustics to amplification to DSP. I always start the class with a history of audio starting back in the late 1800’s. It is fascinating to me that we can, with very broad strokes, roughly break the history down into four buckets.

50 Years of Home Audio Innovations

Matthew Lyons — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:38:56 +0000

Some would say that audio has not changed much relative to other technologies. While audio does not change at the pace of smart phones or computers, audio can trace it’s biggest innovations to the semiconductor industry and digital technology. For this list I have excluded disc based source product from the LP to the CD to the DVD to Blu Ray etc. That is another topic by itself. Until then, here are my top ten

Digital Commodities

Matthew Lyons — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:07:23 +0000

Welcome to the digital revolution, but perhaps it's a bit late for that salutation. The last 25 years have seen amazing changes in the audio/video business and most of the technical advances were related to digital technology. Is there a high performance side to digital or is it mass market mediocracy or bust?

The Death of High Performance Audio

Matthew Lyons — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:13:06 +0000

SACD battled DVD audio and iTunes won. So many of my colleagues and audiophiles talk of the death of quality audio. It this so, can it be true? Does anybody cares about audio quality any more?

Ten Questions to Ask Before Building a Theater

Matthew Lyons — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:58:25 +0000

Ok, so you or your customer is considering building a theater. When I am asked the best way to start planning, I have 10 questions I always ask to start the process. It may appear these questions have nothing to do with room acoustics. The truth of the matter is the space and usage planning related to a theater all have to be considered before the real engineering starts.

Welcome to the New LyonSound Website

Matthew Lyons — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:25:08 +0000

Welcome to the new LyonSound web site. All of us at LyonSound are very excited about the opportunities our new website will give us to educate, listen and learn. We are investing tremendous effort to reach out to our customers on our site as well as through the world of social media. For me personally I welcome this new “soap box”. Having taught audio and acoustics for more than 15 years I have amassed a long list of critical information that is misunderstood or misrepresented. So I am already blogging away sharing information that all of us here at LyonSound hope you find useful.

Social

I will also be using twitter to get the word out. Twitter is a fascinating communication tool that really challenges you to get to the heart of your message. I am also using twitter with my students, always driving them to keep certain information and concepts at your fingertips.

Please follow us on twitter, we are @LyonSound.

The Site

The other aspect of our new website that I am very excited about is how it finally brings together the two halves of our business. During my career I have been very fortunate to work on many, many loudspeaker products for our clients. It was my work in loudspeaker design that lead to my interest in small room acoustics and this research resulted in LyonSound starting an acoustical consulting service dedicated to engineering world class listening rooms and theaters. To me, the two separate worlds of loudspeaker design and small room acoustics are really one in the same. You can’t design a loudspeaker without a room to listen in, and every one who buys the speaker will have their own space, which will have a huge impact on how that loudspeaker will sound. I believe this is an important competitive advantage for LyonSound. We walk in both of these worlds, which means we understand better than most how they link together. Now we can bring both of our areas of expertise to you using our new site.

So, onward and upward. I have a long list of subjects about which I plan to blog. Now where did I leave that soapbox…