About ADA
Celebrating 30 Years of Manufacturing Excellence
Welcome to Audio Design Associates Internet home. We hope that our new web site allows you to find the products that most interest you and helps explain their advanced features and functions. Most import we want you to better understand why over our thirty-year history, the ADA brand has become synonymous with "excellence." This excellence is reflected in our engineering, our production, our testing procedures, our ease of use, our durability, our value and as you will learn, our unparalleled sound quality.
Audio Design Associates (or "ADA" and even "Audio Design" as our friends often call us) was founded by Albert G. Langella and Peter T. McKean in 1977. The company was born from a two-store TV/radio/repair-shop that Peter took over in the late 1960's called Hartsdale Radio & TV located in Westchester County, NY, a suburb north of Manhattan. Albert, who displayed natural talent at an early age when it came to electronics, worked for Peter repairing stuff while in high school and later as he studied for his Bachelors in Engineering at the Pratt Institute of Technology.
By the mid-1970's, one of Peter's customer's was looking for a distributed audio system for his new home. Peter turned to Albert to build a custom system for this first client. Over the next few years, several more such customers came along forcing Langella to reconsider the custom "one-off" system designs he had provided to date. At this time, Albert began designing two first generation multi-room systems that offered flexible system design and that were also expandable to cover very large homes. Coinciding with Albert's graduation from college, he and Peter incorporated ADA in May of 1977.
For the first ten years, ADA primarily manufactured its components and systems for installation by its own custom installation division. System 10 was ADA's first single-zone multi-room system and System 56 was ADA's first multi-source, multi-zone, multi-room system. As an aside, many of these first generation ADA systems are still completely functional and operational today, and several of these have been updated with today's digital technology lending credibility to our claim of obsolescent-free technology. While we garnered great press in the electronic magazines of the day, our business took on national and international opportunities when life-style and design publications began covering our installations. Because of exposes in premier publications like Town & Country, Vogue, GQ, and Interior Design (to name just a few), other Hi Fi retailers began to enquire as to how they could sell and install our systems for their own clients.
Peter's favorite line when it came to explaining ADA's growth as a manufacturer was summed up in the phrase: "necessity is the mother of invention." While Peter, the consummate salesman, presented the wonders of life-style electronics to the architectural and design communities, he turned to Albert, the inventor and engineer, to design better and more versatile systems. System 10 morphed into System 100 when CD players came out and then, into the Genesis System. System 56 morphed into System 8000 and System Omega, then into the Millennium family of systems, and today is represented by our Suite family of systems. One doesn't have to look too hard at any of today's technology, and not just ADA's, to find a root or origin that draws from one of ADA's first systems.
Peter also understood the importance of education and community. ADA joined the EIA (Electronic Industries Association) in 1987 - the year he first took ADA to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). In 1989, ADA was among the first manufacturers to support a trade association devoted to custom installation. We are extremely proud to be a founding member of CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association). It is our philosophy that through dealer education and training, customers will benefit the most when it comes to a system installed by a professional, educated installation company. After all, this is an investment for your home. This is why ADA has been a staunch supporter of CEDIA's educational efforts, which aim to raise the standard of excellence for all members of our industry.
Over the years, in addition to supporting its industry, ADA has also been the first to market with new and exciting technologies as well as the recipient of numerous awards and industry honors. In addition to developing the first multi-room audio systems, ADA was the world's first manufacturer to offer bi-directional, serially controlled components and systems that permit integration with control systems. We were also among the first to embrace home theater and THX standards. Later, we were the first to ship Dolby Digital and DTS home theater technology. And today we are the first to offer XM and HD Radio for custom installation.
For these innovative and technologically advanced designs, ADA has received dozens of CEA Design and Innovation Awards and CEDIA Product of the Year Awards. Albert Langella, our President, CEO and Chief Design Engineer, is the first recipient of CEDIA's highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, for his inventions and breakthroughs for the custom installation industry. And Richard Stoerger, our Vice President and COO, was recognized by the CEDIA community as the 2006 CEDIA Manufacturer Volunteer of the Year.
Looking toward the future, ADA recognizes the pressure placed on the electronics' community to produce components and systems that are cheaper. Here we wish to caution those who blindly place price ahead of value when it comes to custom installation. Your home is both an investment and your most important instrument of life-style. You look to it as both a source of pride but also a place to dwell and live. As less expensive multi-room and home theater products make their way into the marketplace, beware of their overall value (lack thereof) as related to your "life-style." The questions we would ask are: "How is it built?", "How long will it last?" and "How will it sound?" We know that if the answers to all these questions are...."Well, it's an ADA," that you can put your mind to ease.
Audio Design Associates, Inc proudly manufactures its components and systems in the United States of America. Thank you for choosing ADA.
