Four Decades
of Independent
Loudspeaker
Engineering

Origins on the factory floor

Redrock Acoustics was founded in 1985 to provide loudspeaker technical services to the car audio industry. In 1989 the company became engineering consultants to Sonavox — one of the highest-volume loudspeaker manufacturers in the world — and the pace of new designs there (hundreds per year) drove the creation of SpeaD, the loudspeaker design software that would become an industry standard. The original SpeaD was forged out of years of work on the factory floor, fed by complex mathematical models and refined against thousands of physical samples until it could predict Thiele-Small parameters and produce a complete driver design in minutes. SpeaD has been a tool of choice for professional loudspeaker engineers ever since.

Engineering depth and an independent test lab

In the years since, Redrock has designed and brought to market more than 2,500 loudspeakers under familiar brand names, many reviewed as best in category and recognized with over 20 industry design awards. The company maintains a complete engineering toolkit — magnetic FEA (DC, AC, and dynamic AC), mechanical FEA (static, nonlinear, and modal), thermal FEA, solid modeling, and a full Klippel-equipped acoustics lab. Redrock was a Klippel beta site for five years and has tested more loudspeakers than any other independent lab in the world, including the drivers featured in Vance Dickason's Test Bench column in Voice Coil magazine since 2003.

Founder & principal engineer

Behind the work is founder Patrick Turnmire, who has spent his career designing transducers and the software used to design them. In addition to leading Redrock, Patrick is a partner in Step Technologies, an audio IP firm holding more than thirty patents and applications across motor topology, materials, arrays, and enclosure enhancements — including the Dual Gap and Low Reluctance Return Path motors that enable extreme excursion from short voice coils. Patrick studied jazz at North Texas State, and that musician's ear continues to inform every design decision the company makes. From its lab in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Redrock Acoustics partners with manufacturers around the world to engineer loudspeakers that measure honestly and sound the way they should.