Chord Electronics has its origins in aircraft construction.
In the early 1980s, founder John Franks was an electrical engineer in the aviation industry, where he was developing control systems that had to meet the industry’s rigorous requirements. It was here that he primarily gained experience in power supply design, which, as he soon realized, would translate neatly to his passion for hi-fi: he drew on his knowledge of ultra-high-frequency switching power supplies and developed a unit in which a strong magnetic flux in a special high-frequency transformer coupled the two power supply rails together. This technology, called “Dynamic Coupling”, solved the problem of distortion resulting from the feedback of strong currents into the ground loop and was the basis for an incredibly fast and agile sounding amplifier – alas, it was ahead of its time: the circuit couldn’t be realized at a reasonable cost with the components available at the time.
It was not until a few years later that suitable electronic components became available, whereupon Franks revived the frozen project and founded Chord Electronics in 1989. The first successes came quickly: Just one year after its foundation, orders came in from the BBC and soon after from other big names such as Abbey Road Studios and Skywalker Sound. At its core, however, Chord Electronics primarily serves the consumer market, with the analog development talent of John Franks being congenially complemented in the digital field by FPGA guru Rob Watts. We wish to congratulate Chord Electronics on the 35th anniversary!