Linea Research History
Linea Research was formed in 2003 by Davey Smalley, Ben Ver, Pip Wilson, and Paul Williams, all of whom had worked together previously in the professional audio industry. Their aim was to design, develop and market innovative professional audio equipment. Having spent much time doing basic research and developing critical pieces of technology, the company produced its first product, the X-Pod Class-D amplifier with an integrated switched-mode power supply and DSP. Success followed, and to this day the X-Pod product line is being adopted by some very prestigious clients who have collectively now deployed thousands of these units. Since then the range of amplifier, DSP, network, and software products have greatly expanded, culminating in the groundbreaking M and C series of processed amplifiers and the ASC48 system controller.
Expertise and Philosophy
Our extensive experience in audio engineering and the associated key technologies places us in a unique position. The integration of Switched-Mode Power Supplies, very high power sonically transparent Class D amplifiers, networked Digital Signal Processing, and the associated control software are all non-trivial and are all areas in which we excel. These are the demanding technologies increasingly needed in modern audio systems, and Linea are able to offer them all.
Every aspect of a Linea product; be that hardware, software or DSP algorithm creation is produced by Linea’s team; we do not out-source any development work. We do this because to attain the highest performance in an efficient cost effective package requires all parts of the system to operate sympathetically together.
Linea branded products offer the industry’s best combination of features and performance while from the point of view of an OEM customer, partnering with Linea allows the deployment of leading-edge products quickly and with the minimum of investment outside their core business.
World Class Manufacturing
Having world leading technology is not enough. The staff at Linea Research also have decades of combined experience in design and manufacturing. This has resulted in the adoption of an approach that leads to very high factory gate quality. Critical to this is ‘design for manufacture’, which yields increased assembly accuracy, robust test regimes, reduced assembly time and high quality in general.
Every sub-assembly is serialised, and logged against the final product it is used in. As any changes to a sub-assembly automatically cause a change in its serial number, we are easily able to determine the exact build standard of any product.
Since our products have been designed to be largely modular, we are able to test every sub-assembly individually prior to testing the finished unit. Each product is therefore effectively tested twice. We feel that this philosophy pays dividends in terms of our proven field quality. Naturally, before shipping every single unit is soak tested and safety tested prior to leaving our factory.
Linea’s Directors
Ben Ver
Linea’s engineering director, Ben Ver has been designing electronic systems professionally for over thirty years. During that time, he has designed products for companies involved in industries as diverse as radio communications, robotics and high performance computing. Prior to forming Linea, he held various senior engineering and management positions in professional audio and has been responsible for the delivery of some of the industry’s most innovative products.
Davey Smalley
Heading up sales and operations, Davey Smalley is an experienced technical sales person with a passion for audio engineering. Prior to the inception of Linea, he was the sales manager for a major professional audio manufacturer. Smalley’s commercial abilities stem from a detailed technical and operational understanding of the pro-audio world; skills honed in the field while operating his own equipment rental company. Working at Linea is his perfect job; ‘Now I can dream up products and have some of the best designers in the world bring them to life – it’s just great!’
Paul Williams
Research and Development Director, Paul Williams has in excess of thirty years of experience in professional audio R&D, having innovated and designed some of the most respected products in our industry. In addition to vast experience with analogue and digital electronics, he is a respected world figure in the field of audio Digital Signal Processing, having been responsible for introducing many new techniques into the industry. That innovation is still apparent as Linea’s products feature genuinely ground-breaking DSP functionality that is simply not available in any other manufacturer’s products.
