Audeze

Audeze's story starts, fittingly, in a Southern California garage — underneath a poster for *2001: A Space Odyssey*, which inspired the company's name. Founded in 2008 by Sankar Thiagasamudram and Alexander Rosson, the company originally set out to build speaker line arrays, until a chance meeting with an engineer who had developed flexible circuit materials for NASA changed the plan entirely. That material turned out to be exactly what was needed for a new kind of headphone driver.

The result was the LCD-1, a retrofitted pair of headphones built around a planar magnetic driver — technology that uses an ultra-thin, evenly-driven diaphragm instead of a conventional voice coil, delivering faster, lower-distortion, more natural sound. It made its debut at CanJam in 2009 and sold out almost immediately. The LCD-2 that followed cemented Audeze's reputation, and the company has continued refining the format ever since with innovations like Fluxor magnet arrays and Fazor waveguides.

Hand-assembled at its own factory in Orange County, California, Audeze has become the most-awarded name in premium headphones, trusted by Grammy-winning engineers, professional gamers, and audiophiles alike. From the flagship LCD series to closed-back studio monitors and gaming headsets, every product is built around the same idea: Uncompromised Audio, whatever form it takes.