Andrew Jones

Andrew Jones, is known for his work as an award-winning loudspeaker designer. His near-lifelong passion for audio began in his early teens and loudspeaker design and development quickly became the focus of that. In total, his schooling, professional career, and commitment to audio and speakers now extends into his 6th decade, with no signs of slowing down.

Jones studied acoustics, physics and electromagnetics at university in the UK, then went on to do post-graduate research work in crossover network design and active noise control before joining KEF where he started out doing research in the company’s state-of-the-art R&D facility. Jones ultimately moved up through the ranks to become KEF’s Chief Engineer. Over his career, Jones has worked with and known some of the great giants in speaker design and engineering, and has now become something of a giant himself, having left his stamp at KEF with unique designs (KEF”s iconic UNI-Q designs, as a matter of fact), which are still in use today. Later, Jones would move to the US to join Infinity, where he designed reference-grade speakers, before moving on to work with Pioneer, where he has developed some amazing high-end speakers for the revered TAD line before going to work designing the ultra-high-value speakers you’ll see in stores today.

Jerry McNutt

Having roots in the DIY hobby himself, Jerry McNutt holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University. As most young DIY'ers experience, studying took a backseat as he found himself more often in the garage building cabinets and systems rather than the Auburn Library. He built his first speaker project, a DIY Subwoofer, from an article in a magazine back in 1984 using a 12" McGee Radio driver that was manufactured by Eminence. He considers this time of speaker building as preparing him for a career in the audio industry. Professionally, he's been involved in creating OEM drivers for Ford, Honda, and Chrysler. For over 24 years, Jerry has been working at world-renowned Eminence Speaker LLC located in scenic Eminence, Kentucky. Jerry began as a Design Engineer at Eminence Speaker and now is their Product Design Manager.

Vance Dickason

Vance Dickason has been working as a professional in the loudspeaker industry since 1974, when he founded Speaker Research Associates (SRA). SRA published the first and second editions of the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook and exhibited its high-end loudspeaker products at CES in 1978. In 1986, Vance joined forces with Audio Amateur Inc. and became editor of Voice Coil, The Magazine for the Loudspeaker Industry (now in its 36th year of publication) and as contributing editor to AudioXpress. AAI has since published the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and the recently released 8th editions of the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook (published in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese) as well as Vance's second book, recently re-released computer aided system design tutorial titled Loudspeaker Design Cookbook Vol. II.

Vance has served as the Test & Measurement Chairman for Audio Engineering Society Conventions and Conferences. Over the span of his career, Vance has been recognized by the industry on several occasions. The first was the prestigious AES Citation Award in 1995 for this long term contribution to audio education. In 2013, the Association of Loudspeaker Manufacturing & Acoustics International (ALMA, now ALTI) presented their also prestigious Beryllium Driver Lifetime Achievement Award to Mr. Dickason.

For the past twenty five years, Vance has been working as an engineering design consultant for various speaker manufacturers and is responsible for numerous award winning designs, including numerous THX and Dolby Atmos home theater certifications. The current and past list of customers that employed his test and measurement services or had designs created for the marketplace includes Snell, Atlantic Technology, Emotiva Audio, MB Quart, Rodgers Instrument, Kenwood, Stillwater Designs, Signet, M&K, Epson, Audax, Audix, Fishman Transducers, NEAR, Dai Ichi, Samsung, Niles, SpeakerCraft, Proficient, Microsoft, Artison, Sapphire Audio, coNEXTion Systems, Triad Speakers, Terra Labs, Definitive Technology (Sound United), Russound, HIVI Research, and Parasound