Q ‘n A Saturday: Noble Audio

Noble Audio

HFN: How did you two meet and what made you decide to work together?
JM: We met at the best Mexican Food restaurant in Thailand (Que Pasa). Brannan’s family knew the owner and spent a lot of time there. Eventually we connected and at the point it was important for a CIEM company to work closely with artists and Brannan was DJ. As IEMs did not have the general appeal they have today, I would give Brannan sampels of CIEMs I designed in exchange for feedback and promotion.

I eventualy ended up moving to China to start my first commercial IEM company and around the same time Brannan moved to San Diego to go to university. As the company in China started to take off I quickly realized I needed someone in the US to facilitate orders. It turned out Brannan was in Bangkok for the summer and flew out to China for awhile to learn more about the products and the company. Brannan and I have been working together ever since.


HFN:
 Brannan, you play a few instruments and also played in bands, what did you play?
BM: I primarily played jazz alto-sax, although I did also play some piano. In addition to jazz I played some big band and ochestral music as well. In addition to your standard instruments, I also was DJ for about 5 years in Bangkok.

HFN: What is driving Noble?
JM: Passion, the desire to be the best, fear of failure, and the fact that there is no Plan B as I have literally put everything I have into this company.
BM: In addition to what John said I think quality design is a big driving factor of Noble. John is obviously known for his design aesthetic and application of certain materials, but lately we have been also very focused on brining cutting edge design to the universal fit products as well.
Overall, products in the category have always been very lack luster in terms of looks and physical quality, we always take this into consideration at Noble.

HFN: What was it that got you into audio?
JM: I love the emotional connection/reaction that music can create.
BM: For me music, like lighting, has always been about setting the mood and facilitating a good time. When the music doesn’t sound good or the wrong song is playing for the moment people are less likely to enjoy themselves. I first got into DJing becuse the music at the school dances wasn’t very good, now we are into audio because most IEMs (still) don’t look or sound very good.

HFN: How does Noble not end up in chaos, being a company that’s spread around continents? How do you organize everything?
JM: Due to today’s technology, communications, etc… the idea that a company needs to be under one roof is a farce. Companies can pretty much be ran from a smart phone.
BMWe are all over the place and like John said with technology today we don’t need to meet in person everyday to make Noble run. There’s a lot of email and people just playing their parts, but ultimately I think the most important thing ist hat we are all always accesible to one another regardless of day or time.

To learn how their background fields play a role with Noble follow here

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A daytime code monkey with a passion for audio and his kids, Linus tends to look at gear with a technical approach, trying to understand why certain things sound the way they do. When there is no music around, Linus goes the extra mile and annoys the hell out of his colleagues with low level beatboxing.

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