QSC History

QSC Audio Products, LLC is an American manufacturer of professional audio products. QSC's products are targeted to the requirements of audio professionals in concert, installation, portable entertainment and cinema applications. The company's mission is to establish new standards of reliability and performance through the development of breakthrough technologies.

The company was founded in 1968 by Patrick Howe Quilter, who serves as chairman of the board of directors and is still active in the company as a key design engineer. Quilter was at the time an engineering student with a keen interest in electronics and music. With many musician friends and acquaintances seeking him out to make guitar amps, he left school to start his company with the financial backing of family and friends.

At first the company was a storefront operation in Costa Mesa, California, a curious combination of manufacturing and retail operations under one roof. The amplifiers were built in the back and sold out front. The first employees were mostly friends helping out. The early guitar amplifiers bore names like the Duck and the Quilter Sound Thing. The company adopted the name Quilter Sound Company, which was inevitably shortened to the initals "QSC," by which the company is known today.

After some years the professional power amplifier portion of the business overtook the production of guitar amplifiers. Meanwhile, QSC developed more conventional sales channels in retail music and pro audio stores and also started working with export distributors.

In the early 1990s, QSC diversified from power amplifiers by starting development of network audio systems for remote control and monitoring of amplifier systems. QSC called its system QSControl (pronounced "Q's Control"). The company was one of the first licensees of the MediaLink networking technology developed by the Lone Wolf Corp. for professional audio systems. MediaLink, however, did not prove robust enough for professional audio users, so by the mid 1990s QSC abandoned it in favor of Ethernet-based networking, which was becoming more affordable and ubiquitous. At about the same time, QSC licensed CobraNet technology from Peak Audio to develop products that would distribute multiple channels of audio signals in the digital domain over common Fast Ethernet media.

In the late 1990s QSC started a loudspeaker research and development group within its engineering department. Within a couple years QSC offered loudspeaker systems for sale and is today a major supplier of loudspeaker systems in the professional audio industry.