Chord Electronics

Chord Electronics was founded in early 1980 by John Franks. John was working in avionics as an engineer, an industry which demanded both superior attention to detail and absolute perfection. Being a music lover, John wanted to apply the flawless electrical engineering of the avionics world to the audio industry and having already developed highly advanced, ultra-reliable and incredibly efficient power supplies, the scene was set.

For almost a decade, John relentlessly worked away on his amplifier designs, perfecting them with extensive listening as well as measuring their performance, finding it necessary to produce proprietary technologies along the way. This was until 1989 when John’s designs caught the attention of the BBC who took note and promptly contracted Chord Electronics to supply an outside broadcast suite with amplifiers. From there, word spread and EMI, Abbey Road Studios, Sony (New York), Toshiba (Japan), Skywalker Sound (USA), Metropolis Studios (London) and so many more chose Chord Electronics’ technologies.

Since its conception, Chord Electronics has continued to grow. The company produces award-winning reference-grade amplifiers, including mono and stereo preamps, power amps, integrated amps and phono stages. The last two decades have seen the company move into the digital world, with technologies like DACs and audio streamers. Chord Electronics is now also putting world-class sound into the hands (or around the ears of) professionals as well everyday music lovers, with highly affordable British-built products such as the portable Mojo DAC/headphone amp and it’s partnering Poly streamer/music player.