Exemplar Audio was founded in July of 2001 by John Tucker although its roots go back much farther through a long and continuing series of serendipitous events.

While working at the Johnson Space Center on the Space Shuttle program in the early 1990s, John met and became friends with Jeff Markwart, another engineer and avid audiophile working at the Space Center. Their common interests soon led to a collaborative effort modifying existing tube electronics gear and Altec Voice of the Theatre speaker systems. Their initial efforts on the Altecs resulted in an article on modifying them for home audio in Sound Practices. Even with extensive rework the Altecs didn’t provide the level of performance that John & Jeff were looking for though. They began the design of the Exemplar Horns and formed Triode Support Systems to market them and provided another article for Sound Practices on the Exemplar Horns. The Exemplar Horns have proven to be a world class design but the electronics available at the time weren’t up to the level of performance of their horns. This began the development of our own electronic components.

Early in the horn project John met the late John Camille and efforts on the electronics rose to a new level. From the mid 90s until his passing, John and John Camille worked on the refinement of work John Camille had already began as well as new and innovative designs for the refinement and control of tube based electronics. They often worked together until the wee hours of the morning hatching and refining their design ideas. One result was the C4S (Camille Cascode Constant Current Source) which is still in use today. John Camille had begun work on modern hybrid shunt regulators (also resulting in an article for Sound Practices) and we’ve built upon his initial work in our current designs. We’ve had more experience in the development and implementation of modern, high performance shunt regulators and current sources for audio than anyone in the market today.

 At CES in 1997 yet another fateful event transpired with John’s introduction to Winston Ma of First Impression Music. Again a deep friendship soon evolved rooted in their deep passion for audio. Winston has provided continuing support, guidance and evaluation of the development efforts at Exemplar Audio. He provides an ongoing wealth of knowledge and inspiration in reaching new heights in our work.

We continually work diligently to improve and upgrade our designs while expanding the boundaries of state of the art audio electronics. Our focus from the beginning has been driven by pursuing unrivaled sound quality encased in good solid casework without wasting money on “audio jewelry”. We believe that quality components utilized in unrivaled implementations provides the utmost in listener enjoyment.

Our goal is to be one of the premier audio development houses in the world with equipment that continually delights the discerning listener, industry professional, audiophile and music lover.