Radian Audio Company Profile

The Statue of Liberty has long symbolised the American Dream for European immigrants entering the US in order to re-start their lives. At the time of World War II, Germans, Italians, Irish and others came with ambitions aplenty but virtually no worldly possessions. The Kontrimas family fled their native Lithuania in 1944 to escape the Soviet Union’s takeover of their homeland, sailing into New York in 1949 on an old troop ship with their son, Richard. Now a successful businessman, his passion for music has taken him from playing the accordion, through conducting orchestras in New York, to manufacturing loudspeakers and audio components in Orange County, California several decades later.

 Unlike many other loudspeaker innovators, Mr Kontrimas didn’t enter into the business as a so-called failed musician or similar. While at college in New York City, he paid for his Bachelor of Science education at Fordham University by forming an orchestra that performed at various galas and concerts in what he refers to as ‘my wonderful student days’. ‘My band fluctuated between five and 15 men, dependent on the gig,’ he recalls. ‘Remember, we had no amps or electric guitars in those days, so it was down to the size of the brass section.’

 He furthered his chemistry degree with a Master’s in physical chemistry and a Ph.D in Metallurgy at Iowa State University, before joining IBM’s R&D department and moving into marketing some years later. After relocating his family to California in 1974, he went about establishing his own electronic company, Bridge Associates, in 1977 that is still in operation today.

 His love of music and his desire to hear sound accurately reproduced led to the foundation of Radian Audio Engineering Inc in 1988. ‘It was a stroke of insanity,’ he remembers. ‘I didn’t enter into it with a business plan and so I made all the initial mistakes that could and should have been avoided. For me, establishing a loudspeaker company was an extension of my love of music, and I didn’t make a serious initial investment to start the business. At first this was a passion and a hobby, but it soon took over and became increasingly important. I just wish I had spent the initial years taking it more seriously. Furthermore, I didn’t realise that most companies involved in the sound creation and reproduction business were so conservative, and were generally distrustful of buying new products for, at least, the first five years.’

 A number of engineers designed a production line for Mr Kontrimas at a facility in North Anaheim, which initially led to the first batches of compression driver diaphragms being produced as replacements for drivers of other manufacturers. These are made of proprietary heat-treated aluminium alloy and feature edge-wound voice coils, Kapton voice coil formers and Mylar surrounds. Several major loudspeaker manufacturers quickly identified Radian as an important source for their compression driver needs and became OEM customers. For example, they have used Radian drivers in the last four Summer Olympics and last three Winter Olympics. Coaxial loudspeakers were introduced shortly after, followed by woofers. In independent laboratories, tests detected less measurable distortion than the competition. ‘It wasn’t long before the studios in Studio City and Burbank were ordering large quantities of these, diaphragms,’ recalls Mr Kontrimas. ‘Many of the engineers were suffering from ear fatigue and getting headaches after just a few hours, and needed to take long breaks thereafter, whereas with our replacement diaphragms, the same engineers could work longer without breaks and hear detail that they couldn’t previously pick up. These are the endorsements you live for and make you want to continue your research and development.’

 Radian Audio’s initial success came in the US studio market but it soon became clear that this niche market was too small to justify the costs of the business, and so the target shifted to areas of the market that turned over compression drivers and coaxial drivers more quickly, closely followed by the fixed installation sector. This included the growing house-of-worship market, corporate conference rooms, airline termini and leisure centres. In the early 1990s, the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel was one of the first to embrace Radian speakers acquiring 36 speakers for a lounge high-level ceiling. Today, Radian Audio is a major player in the OEM loudspeaker component business, the fixed installation market and the portable/tour sound industry. Among the many notable installations it can quote are Caesar’s Palace, where the convention centre uses 132 512/2bc-8 12-inch coaxial speakers; the Orlando World Center Marriott, with a selection of speakers; the Washingtom CD Convention Center, claiming 925 512/2bc-8 coaxial drivers; Balley's Casino in Las Vegas with its 850 combination of 512/2bc-8 and 508/2bc-8 coaxial drivers; and the Fort Worth Convention Center, with more than 425 512/2bc-8 coaxial drivers.

 In 1998, the manufacturer developed a finish that it patented as Duradian. The scratch-resistant, waterproof protective coating is applied by embedding itself into the outer layer of the carefully constructed Baltic birch cabinets, which can then be sprayed – usually black or white but with other options available. The all-weather Duradian coating is applied to all of Radian’s enclosures, including the Apex 1200 and 1500 floor monitors, which were launched at the 2008 Namm show. The compact, low profile, two-way floor monitors incorporate 12-inch and 15-inch coaxial speakers, with 2-inch compression drivers. By using coaxial drivers Radian Audio has been able to engineer the new Apex wedges with front baffles that are 40 per cent smaller than most conventional floor monitors. Both monitors are fitted with neodymium magnets.

 The current Radian portfolio includes full-range systems, such as the RPX-108, RPX-112 and RPX-215 coaxial loudspeaker systems, using 8-, 12- and 15-inch coaxial drivers, with the RPX-215 with an additional 15-inch woofer. Subwoofers include single and dual 15-inch RPS-115 and RPS, and the single and dual 18-inch RPS-118 and RPS-218 models – 215 – the ‘S’ in the number indicating that it is a subwoofer. The RPX-108P and RPX-112P coaxial models are, perhaps, Radian Audio’s most versatile loudspeaker systems, capable of producing peak output of 125dB. The trapezoidal speakers can be used as stage monitors, or mounted on integral pole-cup sockets as playback systems. Designed specifically for high-power fixed installation applications, the Contractor Precision Array Series consists of the RCH-1564 and RCH-1594 models. The RPH series (Radian Professional Horn-loaded) indicated that the cabinet has a Duradian finish for resilience to transport and repeated set-up where the protective layer is very important, while the RCH products (Radian Contractor Horn-loaded) are for contractor use, where the system is installed for a long period of time. These cabinets are covered with good paint, which is cheaper for customers. These arrayable two-way loudspeakers use 15-inch woofers with a 4-inch voice coil and a 2-inch exit HF compression driver coupled to 60° x 40° and 90° x 40° high-frequency horns, which can operate in either passive or bi-amp mode.

‘Most manufacturers tend to concentrate their design on DSP, software, microprocessors, but that has never been my primary design philosophy,’ Mr Kontrimas says. ‘It’s an endless loop of psychoacoustics. We source world-class components and materials in order to build the finest products. If you start out with great components – such as compression drivers and coaxials – you have a head start in the game. It doesn’t matter as much about the cabinets and crossovers. For example, the new Apex Neo monitors are among the best coaxial monitors in the world. I’m not just saying that – we have raised the bar here with high-grade level neo magnets for both the high- and low-frequency parts of the drivers, which are complemented by a new diaphragm design using our special ‘cookie’ recipe. This is unique and cannot be copied, and results in less distortion, more energy, improved power handling and extended high frequencies. It’s different when producing a CMR or customised manufacturing request – you simply manufacture to others requests.’ Mr Kontrimas is confident that there is no conflict of interest between OEM and Radian production.

Significantly, industry figurehead Mark Pinske was appointed as executive director of sales and marketing for Radian Audio Engineering in December 2009. His seven-year association with Frank Zappa as his chief recording engineer was followed by a successful run with other leading manufacturers. He was originally employed with Quad-Eight Electronics, a Southern California-based manufacturer of recording and custom film consoles and audio processing equipment, where he worked his way up in the company performing a number of roles, including engineer, national sales manager and plant superintendent. His experience is already starting to catapult the Radian brand onto the global market. ’Above all, Mark possesses an exceptionally good ear and we’re going to use this for the new products that we’re about to launch,’ offers Mr Kontrimas – referring to what he calls ‘The Full Pinske’.

 For his part, Mr Pinske is full of praise for the Radian products: ‘I wouldn’t have come to work for any other manufacturer, as I knew these speakers were the best on the market. Given the quality of the components and the speakers, I can only assume they’re not on the world stage for one reason – a lack of marketing. And that’s where I come in. It is a breath of fresh air to be working for a smaller manufacturer that dedicates virtually all its time and resources into making high-quality products.’

 The fusion of Mr Pinske’s experience and Mr Kontrimas’ knowledge of metals and production is formidable. Mr Pinske is already devising plans to elevate Radian to another level of the world stage, and this in turn will enable Mr Kontrimas to focus his attention solely on product development. Radian’s presence in Asia is already growing, with a large number of ceiling coaxials installed in the Putrajaya Convention Centre in Malaysia in 2004, and Allen Lun successfully building the Radian brand in China over the past six years. Through his love of music, Mr Kontrimas has built a loudspeaker brand that is highly regarded in selected circles, but these are now expanding on an international scale.

 www.radianaudio.com