Velodyne Acoustics Sold To Germany’s Audio Reference

When I first got into audio in the 1990s, there were really only two subwoofer specialists that my bass-head friends turned to for low-frequency satisfaction. The British newcomer REL was growing in popularity among 2-channel aficionados, but for the home theater crowd, bass came from Velodyne Acoustics. Ever since David Hall founded the company in 1983, Velodyne was synonymous with subwoofers. Along with M&K Sound, which built the first powered sub in 1977, Velodyne helped shape the way bass is reproduced in the home with its patented, accelerometer-based High Gain Servo system. But much has changed in the audio industry in the intervening years. For the average consumer, home audio gear has become all about stylish looks and lifestyle convenience — not exactly strong points for Velodyne subwoofers — so it has become harder and harder for subwoofer manufacturers to make a profit in an industry that is no longer part of the mainstream.

Developments in linear motor design has lead to the need for servos waning.  As David Hall seemed to treat his work with subwoofers as focused on problem solving, it is possible his desire to leave the audio industry stemmed from a realization that he had solved a problem that no longer needed solving.  Today's modern linear motors are capable of achieving the same very low distortion that servo designs can achieve. 

- Matthew Poes - Audioholics Contributing Writer

Meanwhile, new challengers like JL Audio and SVS have created innovative, high-performance subwoofers for bass enthusiasts, luring many would-be Velodyne customers away to newer and better things. Of course, subwoofer specialists aren’t the only ones building subs. These days, every major loudspeaker manufacturer makes powered subs, many of which are excellent. From the $399 RSL Speedwoofer 10S to the $100,000 YG InVincible 21.2, there is great bass to be had at every price point. In the context of this kind of competition, it seemed for some time that Velodyne simply couldn’t keep up. After a period of relative stagnancy, the Velodyne Acoustics website was suddenly shut down in November of 2019, leading many to believe that the company had called it quits. Was it all over for Velodyne Acoustics? That certainly seemed to be the case. Audioholics founder Gene DellaSala had this to say about the apparent demise of Velodyne Acoustics:

In my opinion, Velodyne Acoustics ‘died’ the day David Hall's wife took over operations and thought it was a good idea to sell Velodyne subs at retail, direct to consumer, without altering pricing or supporting their existing dealer network. They basically lost 80% of their dealer network when this happened, and it was a blow they couldn't recover from. Within just a couple of years, they lost most of their engineers and IP people responsible for designing subwoofers, either due to firing, layoffs, or abandoning a sinking ship. It's tragic to see an American audio company that literally defined the category completely abandon it without fanfare or tribute to their heritage.  The powers that be decided audio is no longer in their portfolio. I still have 2 DD-15+ subs and love them, but will retire them when the amplifiers die.

- Audioholics founder Gene DellaSala

But wait! Just as we were about to publish a story announcing the end of Velodyne’s 36-year run in the audio industry, it was announced that Velodyne Acoustics had in fact been sold to a new owner, Germany’s longtime Velodyne distributer, Audio Reference. The 20-year-old company also distributes other well-known audio brands, including Sonus Faber, Krell, Meridian, Audio Research, and M&K. The acquisition announcement from Audio Reference’s owner and managing director, Mansour Mamaghani, came after “a year of intense negotiations with David Hall,” which was all going on behind the scenes.

Here is what the announcement said:

“Velodyne Acoustics has been purchased by Audio Reference in Germany. After a year of intense negotiations with David Hall, owner of Velodyne, Audio Reference sealed the deal on November the 22nd in 2019. Audio Reference have been distributing Velodyne in Germany for more than 20 years and have unrivaled experience with the brand. The purchase extends to all stock, spares, patents, designs, and tooling for Velodyne subwoofers.

‘We are very excited with the opportunity presented by the Velodyne purchase. Our goal is to reinstate Velodyne as the market leader for compact high-powered subwoofers. We understand this will take some time, but we have already brought the Velodyne design team back together to review the existing product line and also our expectations for the future.’ The Velodyne Acoustics website will be back online within a week. This will contain details of the current product line-up availability, but most importantly, how to obtain service support for existing Velodyne products globally. Velodyne’s global operation will now be based at the Audio Reference HQ in Hamburg, Germany. Velodyne Acoustics remains a highly regarded brand. They were market leaders in compact high performance subwoofers for twenty-five years. David Hall has sold Velodyne Acoustics to focus his attention on the Velodyne LiDAR division. It is a testament to the brilliance of David Hall that he can lead two unique global technology brands in succession.”

- Mansour Mamaghani, Owner of Audio Reference

Velodyne LiDAR - Driverless Cars of the Future

In 2016, Velodyne spun off a new company called Velodyne LiDAR (Light imaging, Detection and Ranging), designing and manufacturing 3D sensors for autonomous vehicles and industrial robots. As Velodyne LiDAR CTO Anand Gopalan explains it, lidar is a “light-based technology, (with) much higher resolution than radar. (It) can see colors, reflectivity, and lane markings. It can sense context similar to a camera, but since it brings its own light to the party, it’s not at all sensitive to ambient light conditions — it basically works the same whether it’s dawn or dusk or night or daytime.” Lidar sensors are used in many (but not all) self-driving car systems to provide three-dimensional information about the car’s surrounding environment. Velodyne has had considerable success in this new, seemingly more profitable business venture. In a recent article, CNET mentioned Velodyne in its list of the “biggest transportation disrupters” of the decade.

Entering the lidar industry may seem like a bit of a left turn for Velodyne, but the company’s founder and chief engineer, David Hall, has always had an interest in emerging technologies. In 1983, the High Gain Servo system he used to control cone motion in the ULD-18 subwoofer was a significant technological breakthrough in low-frequency audio reproduction. The sub boasted distortion of less than 1% — 20 to 30 times lower than that of competing products — and earned Hall the 1984 Special Engineering Award from the Consumer Electronics Association. The 120-pound ULD-18 subwoofer was just the first of many award-winning designs to come from Velodyne, including the F series, HGS series, SPL series, DLS series, and finally the DD series. The Stereophile Guide to Home Theater once stated that “when Velodyne announces a new subwoofer, the earth trembles — literally.” Along the way, Velodyne was granted more patents for subwoofer design than any other manufacturer. Here is a timeline of some of the company’s notable technological advancements:

• 1984, Patented the first servo-controlled subwoofer lowering distortion to below 1%, 1984 Special Engineering Award, from CEA
• 1984, Patented the Sealed Accelerometer
• 1995, Patented the Energy Recovery Class D amp design
• 1995, Developed the Dual Tandem Voice Coil
• 1996, Introduced the HGS-10; the first single-driver subwoofer smaller than a 12” cube
• 1996, Introduced the world's first remote-controlled subwoofer
• 1999, Engineered Current Sensing Servo, awarded the CES Design and Engineering Showcase Award
• 2003, Introduced the Digital Accelerometer
• 2003, Developed the Digital High Gain Servo system, lowering distortion to less than 0.5%
• 2003, Introduced the Patent Pending Digital Drive Room Equalization System
• 2005, Introduced digital, one-touch room bass EQ

In 2005, Velodyne also began its foray into the world of lidar with the release of the HDL 64, the first real-time 3D-lidar sensor in the industry. Earlier that year David Hall and his brother Bruce (who was president of Velodyne at the time) had entered a vehicle in a driverless car race called the DARPA Grand Challenge, which was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Hall felt that the existing lidar technology and camera-centric solutions available at the time were too limited, so he developed a new system that used 64 rotating lasers to calculate the distance of nearby objects, producing about 200 times more data points per second than earlier systems. The Hall brothers sold their system to other DARPA Grand Challenge contestants, and thus the Velodyne lidar business was born. In 2016, Velodyne's lidar department was spun off as a separate business. And in August of that year, the Ford Motor Company and the Chinese multinational technology company Baidu together invested $150 million in Velodyne LiDAR to help the company commercialize its lidar sensors. The following year, Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck Lite sensor garnered attention as an Honoree at the CES Innovation Awards, shortly before the company opened a large, fully-automated factory in San Jose. Velodyne also has a production facility in Morgan Hill, California, and an R&D center in Alameda, California. Looking to expand beyond Silicon Valley, the company now has offices in China and Europe, and is planning to open offices in Korea and Japan in order to facilitate relationships with international customers.

“(Velodyne) has been hard at work developing optical sensors that use reflecting light to create a three-dimensional map of the world around said sensor. This makes for a far clearer picture than what might be achieved with cameras or radio waves (radar) alone… Suppliers rarely get credit where it’s due, but in this case, lidar manufacturers truly are helping society move toward our autonomous future.”

 - Andrew Krok, CNET’s Roadshow

In November 2019, Velodyne LiDAR debuted a new sensor called the Alpha Prime, which the company claims is the most advanced on the market, with “unmatched perception, field-of-view, and range for autonomous markets including transportation, trucking, and robotics.” According to Velodyne CTO Anand Gopalan, the Alpha Prime is “a significant step forward in enabling the advancement of the autonomous vehicle and robot industries. We believe Velodyne’s versatility and agility extend our leadership status in the lidar business to empower autonomous solutions on a global scale.” Velodyne will be showing its newest lidar products at CES 2020.

What's Next for Velodyne Acoustics?

Will David Hall ever return to his original passion of high-performance, low-frequency audio? Velodyne Acoustics seems to be in good hands with its new German owners, but perhaps, like GoldenEar Technology’s Sandy Gross, Hall will make a return to audio by starting a whole new company some day in the future. In the meantime, we will be interested to see what Audio Reference’s Mansour Mamaghani does with the Velodyne Acoustics brand. Will we soon see a new groundbreaking subwoofer design sporting a Velodyne badge? Time will tell.