Linea Research History

Linea Research was formed in 2003 by Ben Ver, Pip Wilson, Paul Williams and Davey Smalley, all of whom had worked together previously in the professional audio industry.

Their vision was to be the benchmark for amplification and DSP solutions in the professional audio world — trusted, relied upon, and revered. In doing so they wanted to empower audio system designers and users with products that delivered power, control, and innovation, enabling unforgettable audio experiences across the globe.

After lengthy research and development of critical elements, 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 tens of thousands of units.

Since then the range of amplifier, DSP, network, and software products have greatly expanded, including the groundbreaking M and C series of processed amplifiers and the ASC48 system controller, and why Linea Research powers the heart of outstanding audio systems, ensuring that performance, reliability, and sonic excellence are never compromised.

L to R: Davey Smalley, Ben Ver, Paul Williams

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.