About SSOUNDS
We build systems that solve problems
A professional loudspeaker manufacturer that also runs the shows its systems play. Operating across the United Kingdom, the United States and Nigeria.
Every product in the SSOUNDS range exists because something failed on a show.
Not catastrophically. Loudspeakers rarely fail catastrophically. They fail by degrees: a system that drifts as its coils heat, a crossover region that measures flat and sounds smeared, a subwoofer array throwing as much energy at the neighbours as at the audience, a hang that does not match the file it was predicted from. These are the failures that cost a production its evening, and they are engineering problems with engineering answers.
We design and build our own line arrays, point-source enclosures, subwoofers, stage monitors, amplifiers and DSP. We control the signal chain from transducer to firmware, because a system tuned across parts nobody owns is a system nobody can answer for.
What makes us different
The engineers who tune the cabinet fly the rig
Most manufacturers sell a system and hear about it again only when something goes wrong. Most production companies deploy systems they had no hand in designing. SSOUNDS does both, and that is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly: our touring division has anchored more than 700 major productions, and the engineering that goes into the next enclosure is informed by the last load-in rather than by a specification meeting.
It shortens the loop between a problem observed at front of house and a change made in firmware. It also means the people who publish a coverage prediction are the people who have to stand in the room it describes.
Engineering
Six problems, and what we built for them
Named technologies are cheap. What follows is the failure mode each one exists to answer, stated first, so the claim can be judged against the physics rather than the name.
DynaControl
The problem
A voice coil heats as it works. Its resistance rises, sensitivity falls, and the system that was tuned at soundcheck is a different system by the encore.
What we built
Amplifier and preset behaviour that holds the tuned tonal balance as coils heat under sustained output, so the last hour of the show measures like the first.
PhaseTrue
The problem
Conventional IIR crossovers rotate phase through the crossover region. The magnitude response measures flat while the impulse response is smeared, which is heard as a loss of definition rather than as a tonal fault.
What we built
FIR phase-linear crossovers, for a coherent impulse response through the crossover region.
IsoPhase
The problem
Two compression drivers sharing one horn do not automatically sum as one source. Where their path lengths differ, they comb, and the pattern collapses at exactly the frequencies that carry intelligibility.
What we built
An isophasic waveguide that sums multiple drivers into a single coherent wavefront, with the mouth aperture, not a flare angle, setting the pattern.
CardioSteer
The problem
At subwoofer wavelengths a cabinet radiates in every direction. Half the output goes to the stage, the back wall and the neighbours, where it is at best wasted and at worst the reason a noise limit is breached.
What we built
Steerable cardioid arrays that direct low-frequency energy forward and cancel it behind.
VoxClear
The problem
Speech intelligibility lives in the ratio of direct to reverberant energy. In a hard room, more level makes it worse, because the room is amplified along with the voice.
What we built
A voicing developed for intelligibility in acoustically difficult rooms, prioritising the direct field rather than raw output.
FastSet
The problem
A prediction file is a contract with the room. If the splay angles set at height do not match the geometry that was modelled, the prediction is fiction and nobody finds out until the room is full.
What we built
Steel and aluminium rigging with captive titanium pins and detented splay steps, so the array as hung reproduces the array as modelled, deployment after deployment.
The reasoning behind each of these is published in full, with the mechanism and the trade-offs, in our engineering notes. Systems are networked and monitored over SNet, and carry Dante audio-over-IP with redundant primary and secondary ports.
How we publish data
A prediction is not a measurement, and we will not print it as one
Directivity charts on our data sheets are computed by the SSOUNDS system prediction engine as a phase-coherent wave solution of each product's actual driver complement: cones as rigid pistons with their real diameters and spacings, waveguides as continuous mouth apertures holding the rated coverage. The conditions and the limits of that computation are stated on every chart, including what it does not model, such as cabinet edge diffraction, horn loading detail and production tolerances.
Loudspeaker data files for prediction software, GLL and CLF, are issued from measured data only. Those formats are read as measurement by every tool that consumes them, and a simulated file loaded into EASE is indistinguishable from a real one. Where a figure is a specification rather than a measurement, the data sheet says which, and states the conditions the figure is specified under. A number without its conditions is not a specification.
We would rather publish a smaller set of figures we can stand behind than a complete one we cannot.
The company
Three regional headquarters
SSOUNDS has grown market by market, incorporating locally in each one rather than exporting from a single base. Research and development is in Europe; the African operation in Abuja carries the touring and production division.
Samuel Ozonyiri, Chief Executive Officer
Our story
Rooted in live sound since 1992
Sorochi Life Communication, a circle of musicians and sound people.
UK / European HQ
Mildenhall, United Kingdom
82a James Carter Road, Mildenhall, IP28 7DE, United Kingdom
Sales: +44 20 3769 6537Office: +44 20 4520 8603support@s-soundspro.comAmerican HQ
Sheridan, United States
30 N Gould St, Ste 20638, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA
+1 307 312 8218support@s-soundspro.comAfrican HQ
Abuja, Nigeria
No 2, 3rd Avenue, Prince & Prince Estate, Kaura, FCT, Nigeria 900210
+234 703 922 5358support@s-soundspro.comRegistered company details are on our legal information page.
Standards and support
What ships with the system
Products carry CE marking, TÜV, EAC and WEEE compliance, and a two year limited manufacturer warranty. Every model publishes a data sheet with an architectural and engineering specification paragraph written for tender documents, a user manual covering rigging and pinouts, and directivity tables. Drawings, certification documents and prediction files are issued on request.
Systems are specified with predictive acoustic modelling against the actual venue geometry before anything is quoted, and deployed with rigging, tuning and on-site engineers where the production calls for it.