Krix Speaker Systems

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA (15:52): Many a great band or brand is dreamed up and hashed out inside the family garage and Krix Speaker Systems is no exception. With a stash of old radio parts, Scott Krix began playing around with kit amplifiers and experimental speakers in the family garage in the early seventies. By 1974, having completed his engineering degree and upgraded to a garage of his own in an Adelaide suburban rental, Scott launched the Krix brand and began building speakers for friends.

By 1976, Scott opened The Acoustic Foundry in Goodwood, an edgy little retail store popular with university students, offering design-your-own speaker kits. Scott set out to demonstrate that his own designs were better than the perceived superiority of overseas brands and that they had a potential price advantage thanks to astronomical import duty and sales tax. With a sideline developing semiprofessional systems for nightclubs, supply soon outstripped demand, and the leap was made into a major commercial investment—an acre of land in the southern suburb of Hackham.

What started as a 120 square metre factory build has multiplied, over the past 40 years, as demand grew into over 2,000 square metres of floor space housing an administration centre, multiple workshops and assembly line, warehousing and a research and development department. In fact, their U-shaped assembly cell and quality control acoustic test chamber is believed to be one of the largest and most advanced in the world.

Accordingly, all employees are given the opportunity to undertake additional training to meet the demands of the latest technologies. My recent visit to the Krix factory included a tour of the newest reconfiguration and upgrade to shed 1 and I must say that it was very impressive. From the first to the last, I could see that Krix take their speaker making very seriously, with a global reputation to prove it.

The Krix team, which includes the five brothers Krix —Scott, Ashley, Brett, Kingsley and Gary—are known worldwide for manufacturing exceptionally high-quality loudspeakers for both commercial and domestic use, and I can declare that I have had a pair of Krix speakers since 1998. As expected, they are still going strong and they provide an excellent aural experience.

Despite humble beginnings in Adelaide, Krix has been hugely successful in the commercial installation industry with Krix loudspeaker systems used in more than 3,000 cinemas in 30 countries worldwide, including a 60 per cent share of the Australian cinema market.

Krix is still at the cutting edge of the latest 3D immersion sound technology and has been working with Dolby to develop speakers specifically for Dolby Atmos, installing five full theatres with up to 61.3 channels of sound, an enormous leap from the traditional 7.1 channels of cinema sound. The future of high quality cinema sound really is here in South Australia.

Their most recent large-scale international project was the VOX outdoor cinema in Dubai, an epic project requiring custom screen speakers and subwoofers to blend with the rooftop design of the outdoor cinema perched on top of Dubai's leading shopping mall. The results, I hear, are both visually and acoustically phenomenal.

The awards list for Krix designs is truly impressive, from the 1991 Sound+Image highly commended award for the Krix Superbrix, to the series SX home cinema range being announced Custom Installation Product of the Year for 2016, hardly a year goes by without Krix winning an award for one or more of their products.

Every year Krix continues to push the boundaries of what is believed to be possible in sound quality, and I am pleased to see that despite a massive global shift away from Australian manufacturing, Krix have managed to stay local, not just surviving but thriving and delivering much-needed manufacturing jobs to workers in our state. I would like to congratulate Krix on over 40 years of success, and wish them all the very best for the future.