About Ai

Audio Intelligence began with the desire to bring high quality sound reproduction to those who demand excellence, but with an important additional requirement - value. Ai's mission is to provide the very best reproduction with designs that are optimized for the best engineered value. While nothing is sacrificed for peak performance, nothing is done that costs money without a commensurate benefit.
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While many companies have developed sound reinforcement systems that are loud, few are capable of high fidelity at higher sound pressure levels. Critical listening applications, such as studios, concert halls, jazz clubs, or even high performance home theaters, require sound reproduction that has both the highest accuracy and high output levels. This is where Ai's products excel.
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The desire to deliver high sound quality at high sound levels became a reality when Kenny Jackel, a sound industry veteran, met Dr. Earl Geddes, one of the industry's leading designers. Ai's loudspeakers, the company's core designs, are a mix of cutting edge proprietary technologies, many patented by Dr Geddes, and high quality manufacturing combined in a way to keep costs reasonable.
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But cost is secondary for the team. They knew they wanted a line of products that would not be priced at a premium, but the emphasis, based on the decades of work of Dr. Geddes, has always been on absolute sound quality. The value comes from optimal engineering using the latest in psychoacoustic research. Nothing important is taken away and nothing that is redundant is utilized - premium performance at a reasonable price.
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The proprietary technologies employed in the ESP line of loudspeakers includes the true constant directivity waveguides (discovered by Dr. Geddes), a proprietary and patented Refractive Waveguide PlugTM that virtually eliminates "coloration" while maintaining high sensitivity and high output levels, as well as an intricately designed, acoustically benign plastic composite enclosures that look as good as they perform. Wood is not used because it is acoustically resonant - ideal for a musical instrument but not a sound reproduction loudspeaker.
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These technologies combine to yield a design that is able to maintain sonic accuracy even in difficult real-room setups. Ai's loudspeaker solutions form complete systems that allow venues to have as accurate a sound reproduction system as currently possible, while simplifying the jobs of the designers and engineers. This ease of use will be taken a step further with Ai's line of self-powered speakers, designed with integrated amplifiers and DSP to create a perfectly matched unit. This line will be introduced in 2008.
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Ai produces loudspeakers that are extremely sensitive. While not beyond what is currently available in the market, these loudspeakers are none the less capable of more usable output than most competing designs because they have taken into account psychoacoustical performance at the high SPLs. That is, they can be turned up much louder than many loudspeakers while still sounding their best.
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The designs employ true constant directivity waveguides. This means that their off-axis response is a near perfect match to their on-axis response, creating a more consistent and intelligible total sound field in the room (the direct and reverberant fields). The suppression of diffraction from the cabinet edges adds to overall clarity, while the Refractive Waveguide PlugTM virtually eliminates "higher order modes," internal diffraction and resonances that occur in every horn, which color and distort the sound.
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Ai's co-founder Kenny Jackel has spent a lifetime in music and sound. After graduating from the Berklee school of music, Mr. Jackel spent a decade in the US as a recording engineer for top studios in New York and Tokyo. This was followed by a career outside of the US as a recording engineer and most recently the founding of Electro-Acoustic Design Group, which specializes in acoustic design and construction and is a leader in this field. Because of his background designing studios, clubs and other high performance venues, he brings to Ai a thorough knowledge of the challenges designers face when they try to achieve excellent sound quality while working within the constraints of technology, architecture, materials and budgets. This insight gives Ai's products a level of user-friendliness, reliability and value that will allow designers to do their very best.
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The story of Dr Earl Geddes begins like many others, with a desire to understand loudspeakers, build them, and ultimately find ways to improve them. But his story goes in directions few could follow. Dr Geddes was a pioneer in the use of numerical analysis applied to loudspeaker modeling. Using detailed numerical analysis to understand the complex phenomena present in a functioning loudspeaker allowed an advancement in design that had previously not been achieved.
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This modeling is capable of explaining every aspect of a loudspeaker, including the drivers', thermal, mechanical and acoustical behavior, as well as the defraction effects of enclosures and the modal response of waveguides. Waveguides, as distinguished from normal horns, offer better directivity control and were also pioneered by Dr Geddes, as was the use of sound refracting foam to make them virtually resonance and diffraction free, yielding the most natural sounding high output high frequency sources available in the market today.
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His designs and patents include many more innovations that are incorporated into Ai's products and that will appear in future products. The company's focus on R&D and the intellectual property and designing abilities of Dr Geddes gives the company the technical advantages of a large corporation while maintaining a smaller, more flexible and cost effective operation. Ai has strategically located its manufacturing in Thailand. Thailand's combination of an open business framework, low labor costs and high quality workforce make it well suited to achieve Ai's high quality standards.