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QSC Audio Products, LLC is an American manufacturer of professional audio products. QSC's target markets are audio professionals in concert, installation, portable entertainment and cinema applications. 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, along with the model 455 and 500 amplifiers. The company adopted the name Quilter Sound Company, which was inevitably shortened to the initials "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. Beginning in the late 1980s, Pat Quilter pursued his interest in more electrically efficient methods of power amplification by refining class G (and later, class H) technology as an extension of class AB, primarily for higher-power models.
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.
The Orange County Register listed QSC as one of the "Top Work Places" in the county in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014. QSC was ranked 7th out of 20 midsize companies; a total of 85 companies were listed.
Patrick Quilter retired from QSC in 2011, and then founded another venture, Quilter Labs, selling "portable, high-power guitar amplifiers" using solidstate Class D technology.