For Jeffery Coombs, founder and president of AmbiSonic Systems, audio has been both a business and a passion for more than 40 years.

Coombs became interested in audio at an early age. In the early ’60s, his father owned a jazz club in Desert Shores, California, and the family home was often the site of late-night jam sessions with some of the world’s finest jazz musicians. Long before multiroom audio systems were commercially manufactured, Coombs’ father had wired the entire house for sound. His father’s creation fascinated the young Coombs, who soon began tinkering with speakers.

When Coombs finished school, he joined forces with renowned speaker designer and concert pianist Mike Petroff to start a new speaker company called Equisound. Coombs and Petroff sought to combine the best characteristics of Dahlquist and JBL, two of the era’s most popular speaker brands. Equisound soon earned praise for its blend of audiophile purity with rock’n’roll dynamics. One affluent customer asked if Coombs could build Equisound speakers into his walls, a request that resulted in a 50-speaker order and a huge installation project at the client’s home.

Inspired by the possibilities of custom audio system design and installation, Coombs in 1972 started Interiors in Sound, one of the first companies to specialize in custom-installed entertainment systems. In order to compensate for the varying acoustics of his clients’ homes, Coombs began building equalization circuits into his custom-designed speakers. After more than a decade of developing and improving these circuits, he began incorporating them into speakers he could market to other installation firms.

In 1999, Coombs founded James Loudspeaker to produce and sell his new speakers. Throughout his 10 years with the company, Coombs created many groundbreaking speaker and subwoofer designs.

Coombs is now president and founder of AmbiSonic Systems, a company dedicated to bringing more of his innovative ideas for outdoor and indoor sound to market.

“I’ve always gone my own direction, always followed my passion,” Coombs says—a contention borne out in every one of the unique products that bears the AmbiSonic Systems name.