Built on George Augspurger’s designs, but not his company.

Augspurger Monitors is a maker of large studio main monitors based in Hanover, Massachusetts, and the first thing to know about it is a point its own website makes in a footnote: “Augspurger® Monitors of Hanover, MA is not affiliated with George Augspurger or Perception, Inc.” The name belongs to one of America’s best-known studio acousticians; the company belongs to Dave Malekpour, founder of the studio-design and equipment firm Professional Audio Design, or PAD. That footnote has been on its about page since at least 2020, according to the Internet Archive.

George Augspurger’s own career is well documented. The Acoustical Society of America, announcing its 2022 awards, described him as president of Perception Inc., an acoustics consultancy, and as a former manager of the professional products division, then technical director, of James B. Lansing Sound — JBL. It said he had designed recording studios, mix rooms, mastering rooms and dubbing theatres for clients including MGM Studios, Paramount Pictures, RCA Records and Walt Disney Imagineering, and had reviewed patents for its journal since 1981. He received a Technical Grammy from the Recording Academy in 2020 and the society’s Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal in 2022 “for contributions to design of recording studios, performance venues, and loudspeakers.” English Wikipedia credits him with the main monitors at Doppler Studios in Atlanta, and as co-author, with John Eargle, of JBL’s Sound System Design Reference Manual.

The company’s link to him begins in 1999. That year, it says, the New York studio Unique Recording asked Malekpour, then a Boston-based systems consultant, for a new main monitor system, and the result was “the first Augspurger® system to be built and installed by Malekpour, designed by George Augspurger himself.” It describes Augspurger as known for custom monitors “around which the rest of the studio was designed.”

From a studio commission to a product line.

Malekpour’s background is in studios rather than loudspeaker factories. In a 2022 interview reposted on the Augspurger site, he said he began working for an acoustic designer in the mid-1980s, started his first business, Anything Special, in 1989, and renamed it Professional Audio Design in January 1993. The company describes PAD as a pro-audio retailer and studio-design group based in Hanover.

Its dates for the monitor business vary. The about page says that after the 1999 commission Malekpour and his team built and installed “hundreds of pairs” of Augspurger-based monitors, and that in 2012 he “launched Augspurger® Monitors as a manufacturing company.” Its press boilerplate says the brand was “launched in the early 2000s,” and a 2023 NAMM release marked a 25th anniversary, quoting Malekpour on “over 1000 installations globally.” We give all three as the company’s own accounts. A 2015 capture of its website in the Internet Archive named “Pro Audio Devices” as the exclusive manufacturer and distributor of “Augspurger Active DSP Main Monitor Systems,” with models such as the GA-215H.

The range has since moved beyond wall-mounted mains to free-standing systems: the Solo, Duo, Treo, Quattro and Classic series, tower systems and subwoofers. The company says the Duo 8 was nominated for a TEC Award in 2016, the Solo 12MF in 2017 and the Treo 812 CFM in 2018, and that a Quattro 415 system was nominated for the 2026 TEC Awards. Its monitors use horns made from rock maple — “11 separate pieces,” it says — in front of a compression driver with a 4-inch beryllium diaphragm, driven by its own DSP-controlled Class D amplifiers; it says Malekpour acquired the amplifier maker Digmoda in 2016 and personally tunes every system sold. Independent mentions confirm installations rather than claims: English Wikipedia records Augspurger monitors at Livingston Studios and The Church Studios in London, and at The Hit Factory in New York.

Beyond the biggest names.

Many studio monitors come from smaller companies, often led by their designers. The seven in this guide are spread across the United States, Britain and Germany, and much of what is known about them comes from their own websites.

Barefoot Sound began in a San Francisco garage, where Thomas Barefoot, a physicist and engineer according to English Wikipedia, built his first monitors; he and Tedi Sarafian formed the company in 2006. It is now based in Portland, Oregon, and says it works with “trusted global manufacturing partners.” Kali Audio, started in 2018, has its design headquarters in Burbank, California; its co-founders include Charles Sprinkle, formerly of JBL Professional, the company says.

Ex Machina Soundworks, which names no founders online, says its machining, finishing and calibration take place in Brooklyn, New York. Augspurger Monitors, of Hanover, Massachusetts, is run by Dave Malekpour and says it is not affiliated with George Augspurger, the acoustician whose designs it grew from.

In Britain, Quested says it was founded in 1985 by Roger Quested, a former London studio engineer, and that its products are hand-built in the UK; its address is in Devon. Unity Audio, in Essex, names Kevin Walker as founder and says its products are designed, built and tested in the UK. In Berlin, EVE Audio was founded in 2011 by Roland Stenz, who, it says, had co-founded ADAM Audio; it says its speakers are assembled there.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A trademark settled in court.

The name has been contested. In March 2023 Professional Audio Design sued Symphonic Acoustics — a studio-monitor company whose website says it was founded by PK Pandey — in the US District Court in Massachusetts, in a case filed as trademark infringement; George Augspurger and Perception Inc. were among the parties listed, according to the court docket published by CourtListener. The case was closed by a stipulation of dismissal in September 2024. On 4 October 2024 PAD and George Augspurger issued what they called a joint announcement: the litigation “has been resolved and PAD owns the AUGSPURGER® trademark.” English Wikipedia separately records that in 2021 the producer Lil’ Ronnie worked with George Augspurger and Symphonic Acoustics on custom monitors for his Einnor Studios in Georgia. We do not characterise either side’s claims beyond those records.

Where the monitors are made rests on the company’s word. A 2018 release on its site says they are “hand-built in the USA,” and it describes cabinets made “by master craftspeople using advanced CNC and shaping tools” and invites customers to visit “our factory”; its contact address is in Hanover. It says it belongs to a wider “PAD Group” of companies, and it has named Miloco Gear as its distributor for the UK and Europe and, in 2024, Ding Dong Audio in China.

For a design guide, Augspurger shows how a brand can be built on a designer’s name while the company itself states plainly that he is not part of it. Compare PMC, another maker of large studio main monitors, and ATC. For this guide we use studio black, silver and a maple brown with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Augspurger’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.