Two designers start again, 1992.

Funktion-One was founded in 1992 by Tony Andrews and John Newsham, the company says. The two had earlier built Turbosound: Resident Advisor, in a 2014 profile, says that around 1977 Andrews, Newsham and Tim Isaacs turned Andrews’ rental company into Turbosound, “so named because their early devices looked like jet engines”; English Wikipedia gives 1978. Funktion-One credits the pair with Turbosound’s TMS-3, Flashlight and Floodlight systems. Turbosound was later sold to AKG, which was in turn folded into Harman, and Andrews and some of his design colleagues broke away to start again, Resident Advisor reported.

Andrews came to loudspeakers through live music rather than the hi-fi trade. In the same profile he said he left a university geology course to take part in the music culture of the late 1960s, toured with bands in the early 1970s, and set out the ideas behind his work in a paper to the Audio Engineering Society in New York in 1988. He has said that the “k” in Funktion is a nod to 1970s funk, according to English Wikipedia, which cites a Berlin magazine, Proud.

The new company took its time. Resident Advisor says it had no major installation until the central show at London’s Millennium Dome in 2000, and that the years in between were spent studying the Flashlight and refining its approach. English Wikipedia, citing a 1999 trade report, describes the Dome show as the debut of the Resolution loudspeaker series. The present company, Funktion One Research Limited, was incorporated in December 1998, Companies House shows.

Purple boxes and axeheads.

Few loudspeaker brands are recognised by sight, but this one is. English Wikipedia, citing Resident Advisor, says the brand is widely known for its purple cabinets and white “axehead” drivers, and the magazine noted that Andrews often appears in publicity photographs in a purple pullover that matches the speakers. Andrews insisted the shapes are functional: “we realised that it was an interesting aesthetic, and we capitalized on it. But we didn’t make any of the shaping to look like that. That’s what it needed to be to perform.”

The engineering claims have stayed consistent. The company says it designs “acoustically flat” loudspeakers that need “only crossover filters, relative delays and gains” rather than corrective EQ, that it designs its own transducers, and, in 2012, that it avoided compression drivers in the midrange; Resident Advisor summed up the signature as paper cones, no EQ out of the box and a holistic approach to the system. Funktion-One also claims industry firsts, including the 21-inch loudspeaker frame size and the turnkey touring system, and in 2012 said it had pioneered Ambisonic surround sound for large events, at the Millennium Dome and Glastonbury among others.

Its name grew in clubs. English Wikipedia, citing trade magazines, lists the Dance Stack of 2002, first designed for the Maze club in Miami; Cielo in New York in 2003, its first US installation; and Berghain in Berlin from 2004, installed by Funktion-One Germany. Space in Ibiza used its systems from 2002 to 2014, LSi reported. By 2014 Resident Advisor called the brand “something like an industry standard” in club sound, noting that Berghain’s coat check sold T-shirts printed with its stacks. Later ranges include Evolution, shown in 2015, Vero, a large-format vertical array for arenas and festivals introduced in 2016, and the PSM15 stage monitor.

Touring sound and documentation.

Concerts and festivals are amplified by a few specialist loudspeaker makers. English Wikipedia credits L-Acoustics, founded by Christian Heil in 1984 and based at Marcoussis, south of Paris, with the V-DOSC line source array of 1992, and says most makers have since adopted the line array — a column of linked cabinets — for touring.

France has a second maker. Nexo, founded in 1979 and based at Plailly, north of Paris, says Yamaha completed its acquisition in 2008 and that its cabinets are designed and made in France. Germany’s d&b audiotechnik, founded in 1981 by Jürgen Daubert and Rolf Belz, is based in Backnang, near Stuttgart; the Paris private-equity firm Ardian bought it in 2016, Providence Equity Partners announced a significant investment in 2023, and the company says its products are handmade there.

Two are British. Martin Audio, founded by Dave Martin in 1971, is based in High Wycombe and was bought by Focusrite plc in December 2019, the companies announced. Funktion-One, formed in 1992 by Tony Andrews and John Newsham after they left Turbosound, is based near Dorking, Surrey, and English Wikipedia lists Berlin’s Berghain among the clubs using its systems.

In North America, Meyer Sound was founded in 1979 by John and Helen Meyer and is based in Berkeley, California. Adamson, which dates itself to 1984 in Vancouver, says it makes its systems at its own plant in Port Perry, Ontario.

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.

Independent, near Dorking.

Funktion-One has stayed independent. Companies House lists Tony Andrews and Ann Andrews as the company’s persons with significant control, and we found no outside group owner. Its 2026 team page names Tony Andrews as founder and director of research and development, Ann Andrews as R&D director and Andrew Low as managing director, and the company is based near Dorking, in Surrey, south of London. Its own list of awards, published without dates, includes the inaugural PLASA Gottelier Award to Tony Andrews “for significant and sustained contribution to the advancement of entertainment technology,” a lifetime achievement award from Audio Pro International and club-industry prizes for the Dance Stack. Live Sound International interviewed Andrews for a cover story on the early days of Glastonbury and the company’s years supplying sound to the festival.

Where the products are made is less clear than with some rivals. Funktion-One calls itself a designer and manufacturer, and in 2012 described itself as “English inventors and manufacturers,” but its website does not say where its cabinets are built, and we found no independent account of its production in the sources we checked. Resident Advisor reported in 2014 that its electronics, such as amplifiers, are “manufactured to their specifications,” and that Formula Sound makes Funktion-One-branded DJ mixers. We therefore make no claim about a factory.

For a design guide, Funktion-One shows how a colour and a silhouette can become the brand itself, with little help from a logo. Compare Martin Audio, another British loudspeaker maker, and Outline, the Italian touring-speaker maker. For this guide we use a deep purple, white and black with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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