M&K Sound – A Brief History
At M&K Sound, we design loudspeakers to sound inherently right, to be universal tools, equally adept with any style of music or movie soundtrack, in stereo or surround.
While other manufacturers were building audio dinosaurs in the form of coffin-sized boxes, M&K led the way into the future with the world’s first satellite/subwoofer system, David & Goliath in 1976. The following year, M&K Sound introduced the Volkswoofer, the world’s first subwoofer with a built-in, dedicated power amplifier.
The journey began in 1973, when Walter Becker of Steely Dan commissioned M&K Sound to design a studio reference subwoofer and monitoring system for the Pretzel Logic LP mixing sessions. The result was the world’s first balanced dual-drive subwoofer and Pretzel Logic went on to become a million-selling Top Ten hit and one of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
M&K Sound combined expertise in live music recording (RealTime Records) and loudspeaker design, drawing heavily on the research and acoustics background of Dr. Lester Field, who had worked at Bell Telephone Research Laboratories and been a full professor at both California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, before retiring as Chief Scientist and vice president of research at Hughes Aircraft Corporation.
By combining creativity, critical listening and extensive experience in live sound recording with scientific methodology and experience, the foundation of M&K Sound was set.
As word of mouth spread rapidly throughout the music and movie industries, M&K Sound systems were created for leading studios, as well as home installations for producers, directors, actors and recording artists.
M&K Sound loudspeakers have been chosen for the development and demonstration of the groundbreaking Dolby Digital cinema and home surround format, for the first public demonstration of the high-resolution Blu-ray disc format, for sound production on Star Wars Episodes I-III and countless other award-winning music, film and TV productions.
A Who’s Who of the professional audio world – film, music, mastering and broadcast studios – continue to entrust their livelihood to M&K Sound reference monitors and powered subwoofers.