History

Albert Von Schweikert has been an audio hobbyist since 1957 when he and his father built a 10 watt Eico amp and a 15" Jensen coaxial speaker kit. Unhappy with the sound of the speaker, Albert began to experiment with the design - and thus a career was born.

In Heidelberg, Germany, Albert studied violin and piano at the Conservatory of Heidelberg University.  Later switching his studies to the electric guitar, Albert went on to play professionally with The Ravens and The Soul Survivors in the 60s and 70s, backing such groups as The Yardbirds, Sonny and Cher and Neil Diamond.

Early success in designing concert PA systems for his band and others, led Albert back to the academic world to hone his technical skills in speaker design. Engineering studies at Georgia State University and practical lab work at the California Institute of Technology fulfilled Albert's desire to combine technical knowledge with his passion for music.

While at the California Institute of Technology, Albert worked under the tutelage of Dr. Richard Heyser, who at the time was using the lab to develop a new measurement system, later called Time Delay Spectrometry. It was here that Albert's design group developed a plasma driver and the legendary Vortex speaker system - a three way, time aligned and phase coherent dynamic speaker system using minimum baffles and 24 dB per octave filters - a first for an American company.

In 1982, the Cal Tech research led to a position with ESS laboratories with Dr. Oscar Heil, inventor of the Heil Air Motion Transformer (AMT). Albert designed the first linear phase crossover network for the AMT and assisted Dr. Heil in the development of the Transar, a push-pull series of rods and discs which emitted sound from a dipolar baffle.

From 1987 to 1989, Albert worked as a driver designer and quality assurance engineer with KSC Industries, the second largest driver manufacturer in the world. During his time with KSC, he worked on more than 100 projects for companies such as Apogee, Bose, Cerwin Vega, JBL, Jensen, NHT and Paramount Pictures.

Concurrent with his work at KSC Industries, Albert produced the Vortex Screen loudspeakers, considered by many to have legendary performance, including Robert Harley of Stereophile magazine, Vol. 12, no. 7, 1989, who described them as "having spectacular imaging" and said that they "outperformed systems by Theil, Snell or Vandersteen".

In 1991, Albert became a consultant to Counterpoint Electronics and designed the highly acclaimed Clearfield speaker line, including the award winning Home Cinema speakers voted "the best home theater speaker system over $2500" by Video magazine, January 1995.

Albert is also credited with designing the Concert Master Armageddon, a $59,000 ultimate state-of-the-art system awarded "best sound at the show" Winter 1993 CES, by Guy Lemcoe of Stereophile, vol. 16, no.4.

Von Schweikert Research was founded by Albert in 1995 - the fulfillment of a dream over twenty years in the making.