Our History: A story of Twin Power

Artistic Audio was incorporated in 1994 and has received two U.S. patents for its unique bipolar transducer designs. We’ve won two international innovation awards for design and engineering from CEMA in 1998 and 2004. We also received an award in 2003 from Audio Video Interiors magazine for excellence in design.

Our company began as a dream for two identical twins – Jim and John Larsen, our president and vice-president. The twins have always had a strong passion for music, art and science and both were students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jim always had a strong passion for music and art, but John was more interested in electronics and the sciences.

The company began when an idea came to John after he saw an isobaric subwoofer at a car stereo show. Long interested in audio engineering, John realized that the “face-to-face” orientation of the speaker could be improved. Why not put the magnets in the middle so each voice coil could work in phase and not collide with each other? With this thought in mind, the company was born.

The next several years Jim and John studied both the theory of electromagnetism and the design of audio transducers through both independent research and in cooperation with Dexter Magnetic Corporation, Red Roc Acoustics and Vertek/XTC. The two did not just study books and mathematical formulation but actually built drivers completely from scratch. Both Jim and John are accomplished at hand winding voice coils and the completely assembling drivers. They learned this from a couple of old hippies named John Vanderslice and Pat Turnmeyer of Red Rock Acoustics.

Now accomplished in the fine art of transducer design, the twins have hand built hundreds of drivers from scratch. John has said, “There is nothing more fulfilling than building a speaker by hand and then being able to listen to it. It’s magic!”

We could tell you lots of stuff about pulsating spheres and perfect point sources, but since you don’t need to know how to build a bridge to cross it, we won’t. And though the true story of where the design and science behind the Mobius speaker came from does revolve heavily around lots of technology and lots of science – the real reason we’re here today runs deeper than that. The real reason we invented, designed and patented our speakers is simple: We love music and wanted to create the perfect way to play it. For ourselves and for you.

It’s really no more complicated than that.

So just listen to our speakers. Hear your favorite song, your favorite orchestral piece, your favorite whatever. Hear the way it takes over the room. Hear the way the bass hits you in the chest with its powerful thrums. Hear the perfect clarity of the strings of an orchestral piece. Hear the high end the low end and every other end. Experience the sweet spot over here, over there, everywhere.

And hear it all as if it were surrounding you from north, south, east and west and all compass points between. That’s 3D holographic sound. That’s artistic audio.

Here’s to the music. May it always play.