A highly experienced transducer engineer with nearly four decades in the industry, Benny Danovi is considered a trailblazer in automotive transducer design, and has been responsible for numerous loudspeaker innovations. Before focusing in on transducer design, Danovi spent 16 years building speaker systems as the owner of his company, Sound Art. Even at the peak of small independent outfits selling hi-fi systems like Danovi’s in the 1980s and 1990s, he was a pioneer in loudspeaker system design utilizing single and multi-chambered ported, bandpass, and transmission line low frequency enclosures, satellite subwoofer systems, and other advancements such as inter-driver time alignment.
Later, at Pioneer and Harman, Danovi played an instrumental role in the evolution of high-performance automotive transducers where he designed over 100 drivers under brands such as Bowers & Wilkins, Harman Kardon, JBL, Mark Levinson, and Revel, many with unique motor and suspension topologies. At Sonos, among other projects, Danovi was responsible for the woofer in the Gen 2 Play 1. Danovi then continued raising the bar higher and higher for cutting-edge drivers at his most recent role at Alpine where he led OEM automotive transducer design and worked on collaborations with brands such as McIntosh and Sonus Faber.
“The global shift towards spending more time at home further accelerated increased consumer desire for space-efficient audio systems, such as reduced height and depth in soundbars, which heightened demand for FCS technology transducers from brands and their respective OEMs. This resulted in company growth at a rate much greater than expected,” says Brian Youngil Cho, Co-Founder and CEO of Resonado Labs. “Benny is one of the best in the game when it comes to advanced transducer design, and we cannot wait to further our mission of introducing the next generation of transducer architecture that enables slim and sleek product design without having to compromise on acoustic performance.”
Resonado Labs is welcoming Danovi to the team just as the company prepares to introduce their first commercial products featuring the first generation of FCS technology transducers, starting with Airstream vehicles slated for launch this summer.
“I’ve been in the industry a long time and have a deep understanding of what the audio industry values and the direction it’s going, and Resonado Labs is in a position to provide something that’s becoming more and more sought after every day – high-performance transducers with a slim profile,” says Danovi. “My philosophy has always been to not only continuously innovate and never settle, but to engineer everything with a passion for the process and with the utmost attention to quality and performance to give the end user the best possible experience. Resonado Labs lives and breathes this mindset. I truly believe the company is introducing an industry-shifting technology, and I’m excited to be in on the ground floor to contribute towards executing the Resonado Labs vision.”
Resonado Labs was founded at the University of Notre Dame and is now headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company continues to expand its activities designing and licensing its low depth structural profile speaker drivers with high diaphragm aspect ratio as an alternative to conventional conical drivers.
Preceding the appointment of Benny Danovi, Resonado hired Mekell Jiles as a new member of the team at the Chicago office. With previous professional experiences at Knowles, Shure, and Motorola, Mekell, a Chicago native, joined Resonado Labs as Senior Mechanical Engineer. An expert in designing and overseeing acoustic mechanical systems and processes, with several patents under his belt, Mekell is also an avid music listener with a passion for jazz and fusion, and is a bass guitar player (which certainly makes him a nice person).
www.resonado.com
