Steady Progress

Correspondingly, the company expanded physically with a new 55,000-square-foot facility in 1993 and again in 1998 with an additional 81,000-square-foot building – thus streamlining the manufacturing processing, increasing output and, upon completion of the first new build, increasing sales by approximately 40 percent.

Moving deeper into system integration, the company began developing loudspeaker technology, spending several years on the process before the debut of the ACE Series in 2001.

“As QSC passed its 30th anniversary, we decided to enter the market for loudspeakers and felt it was necessary to understand the loudspeaker business from the ground up before we could create a truly successful marriage of power amps, DSP and transducers,” Pham explains. More loudspeaker lines followed, including the AcousticDesign Series, WideLine Series, and Installation Line Array (ILA).

Meanwhile, the release of the Digital Cinema Series master quality systems demonstrated a continuing, deep commitment to enhancing the audio experience of movie-goers around the world.

“We believe audience expectations have increased over time,” states Barry Ferrell, senior vice president, cinema. “High-quality picture and sound is now table stakes, an expectation that everything is bigger, louder, brighter and more immersive. From concerts to cinemas to Vegas showrooms, today’s audiences expect to be amazed by what they see and hear.”

The scope of options offered to the global customer base continues to broaden, exemplified by the Q-SYS control space network solution.

It speaks to the company’s anticipation of industry trends and incorporation of emerging technologies as a decidedly key factor in its vision for their products and general expansion.

“Maintaining a broad field of view has been a central component in formulating and executing QSC’s business and product and strategies for decades,” Pham notes. As examples, he cites the introduction of PowerLight amplifiers (more power, high-quality sound and a dramatic decrease in weight) and QSC’s 1996 adoption of CobraNet, which, he adds, “enabled the debut of new solutions allowing transmission of up to 64 channels of digital audio over standard Ethernet networks.”

Designed to utilize off-the-shelf Intel processing and industry-standard networking protocols, Q-SYS let R&D teams of complimentary products focus on creating value at the application and software layer. Pham continues: “QSC was the first in the industry to decouple processing hardware from the software and application layer, allowing us to run the Q-SYS software audio, video and control stack on standard off-the-shelf server hardware.”

Using non-proprietary technology to allow seamless integration with other company’s products prompted further innovation and new applications, software and business models for their partners and the market overall. “It’s important to note, too,” he points out, “that anticipating trends in the industry means involving not only the QSC team, but requires us to keep close to our strategic business and channel partners, industry influencers and end-user customers.”