Live Sound International Feature: Up Close & Personal with 1 SOUND
Charting the approach and development of 1 SOUND.
by Kevin Young
Since Lou Mannarino founded 1 SOUND in late 2018, the company’s reach and product range have grown significantly.
While their success is, in no small part, due to the technology they offer, including products such as the Level Progressive Horn Point Source and Panorama 65 Multichannel Mono+Stereo+Sub loudspeaker system, it’s also a result of the level of flexibility provided by the 1 SOUND Custom Shop, their approach to sales, and the relationships and partnerships they place such a high value on.
That’s borne out by a 2025 event hosted at the company’s New Jersey headquarters, the first, but not last, Global Partner Summit, which brought together dealers, distributors, and competitors to foster collaboration and community – an effort predicated on extending what is decidedly a family business to include customers in a meaningful way.
As 1 SOUND director of creative and marketing, Julia Mannarino (Lou’s daughter), puts it, “We wanted to have all our partners together for training and workshops, so we hosted our U.S. partners, dealers, and distributors from other countries. But it was also a 1 SOUND community event, (a chance) to spend time with our partners and have them all in one room for three days, which was really interesting and motivating for everyone.”
“It was interesting, I think, for the U.S. people,” she continues. “Because they’re walking into a room full of their competitors, but our mentality is all about investing in our dealers and partners, because we want them not just to get along, but to work together.”
That ethic is evident in the relationships the company team fosters with, and between, their partners and their practice of actively recommending the dealers they work with to clients and to each other. The summit, she adds, was a means to further that approach: “For example, we had about 80 people there, and they ended up teaching each other about our products and support, telling each other about how they use them, and sharing audio tips and tricks.”
The mantra of collaboration comes from the top down from the founder, who we’ve profiled previously, and (as anyone who’s dealt with him can attest to) typically emphasizes collaboration and cooperation for the greater good, and achieving great sound over other considerations. That’s also something that drove the company to offer substantial flexibility via its Custom Shop, which Julia oversees.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
“We started with our first speaker, the Panorama MS34, and one or two others,” Julia says. “Then Covid hit. Obviously, that hurt sales, but we took that time, renovated a warehouse, stocked up, built product, and came out strong.
“We’re very much a family business. My dad founded 1 SOUND with his wife, Lindsey, who’s our chief operating officer. I handle the marketing side and Custom Shop,
and my brother, Rudy, provides design support (Louis Anthony Mannarino also runs the Production Rentals Network). In addition, in our production department, we have Jose Leon, who runs production with his brother, and we also have members of two other families here – it’s really nice.”
When asked about the company’s goals, she emphasizes logistics and service. “Our goal is to keep everything in stock, as much as we sell in a year. This past year was a big one for us. We bought another warehouse in 2024 to add additional space for custom work and inventory. And it seems that, as 1 SOUND is on people’s radar more, they’re more excited about our products and sharing that excitement with others.”
That excitement, the company’s culture and ethos, starts with Lou; a by-product of the approach he’s taken to audio and the business since starting his first company in junior high school. His vision then was to be a one-stop production shop, he says. “So, from my first gig in 1976, as an eighth-grader, I provided design, gear, labor, trucking (my dad drove me in his station wagon), and mixing.”
Since then, what became L&M Sound & Light has undertaken the design of systems for theatres, museums, venues, and a wide range of applications, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall (for The New York Philharmonic), and provided full lighting, video, and staging services for a wide-ranging clientele.
Similarly, 1 SOUND is a one-stop shop as well as an expression of Lou’s passion for audio and the deep appreciation for music that’s always informed his approach to audio. “Something I didn’t consciously realize (initially) was that I’m designing loudspeakers based on how microphones perform. I wasn’t consciously doing it, but that’s one of the most important things about micing a stage: what microphones you’re using, how they behave, what they don’t pick up. So that’s how I’ve been making loudspeakers – as valuable tools for what a designer wants to accomplish.”
Referencing the summit, he adds that the key was people sharing experiences, adding: “It was interesting because our European and global distributors were mixing with our U.S. dealers…”
Notably, relating to each other as colleagues rather than competitors. It’s almost like a club, I say, to which he replies, “Seeing everyone here, we realized 1 SOUND is the glue they share. They’re comrades. They respect one another. They learn from one another.”
It was, essentially, an opportunity for folks who may often find themselves bidding against each other for work to meet, share insights, and celebrate what they have in common. Consequently, much of the focus, for Lou, was “teaching audio through behavior and culture, and (talking about) how things are changing. It wasn’t until the third day that somebody finally said, ‘When are you going to talk about 1 SOUND?’,” he adds, laughing.
WALKING THE WALK
In service to that goal, 1 SOUND doesn’t sell through third-party retailers; instead, the focus is on direct partnerships to maintain control and quality. “We take our dealers seriously,” Julia explains. “They don’t have to spend any money on 1 SOUND, necessarily. There are no requirements other than that we trust you, you care about audio, and you’re willing to learn.”
The company is also very hands-on in terms of how its products are implemented in the field. Julia: “We want to be a part of the design. And we want our partners to want that, too, because it’s important that a project gets done right, with or without 1 SOUND speakers. So, if our product isn’t the right call, we’ll recommend a different manufacturer’s product because we really care about that end result.”
Director of sales Michael Wolk knows that from experience. “My first official day (with 1 SOUND) was January 1, 2022, but I’d known Lou and the Mannarino family from our church in NYC. I was on staff at the church, and through L&M Sound & Light, Lou was a friend to the church, providing resources when we did outreach events. He helped us do an audio, video, and lighting integration.
“And then, during the pandemic, to do something creative so we could get people together – a drive-in church event where we partnered with another ministry from Staten Island. So we were able to get people together when they weren’t able to get together, which was a beautiful thing.”
After the pandemic, Wolk and his family relocated to the Poconos to get away from the city: “About a year later, Lou called and said, ‘Would you like to come on board as director of sales?’ I was like, I don’t know much about sales or loudspeakers. But he said, “‘That’s OK; you love people, and you love music. It’s going to be great. Get on the bus.’”
INNOVATION & PASSION
Lou Mannarino
Lou states that the goal with any loudspeaker or technology 1 SOUND creates is A) better sound, and B) to solve problems. That’s the case with not just the loudspeakers, it runs through to loudspeaker controllers, monitors, and free Auralis 3D design software, to name a few.
When quizzing him about how the company’s technology sets it apart, the unique properties of the loudspeakers, their directivity and lack of rejection, he tends to talk more about the intent of the products and how other innovators, past and present, have inspired him, rather than the products themselves.
“I have too much respect for – I won’t say competitors, even though they are – but I don’t consider them competitors, because they’re colleagues. They’ve been around for years, and the people who created designs with these companies are our mentors. I value their work, and I respect it. And because I respect and value it, I try to develop things by taking the body of work they’ve cultivated and growing it, without copying it, because that, too, would be disrespectful.
“As I get older, I think more about the industry and less about my role. You know, when you’re younger, it’s me, me, me. What can I do? What can I accomplish? Now, that’s shifted to what can I, or what can we do to help strengthen and better our industry? The first question we ask with every loudspeaker design is: What’s the value and what problem are we solving?” If the value or problem-solving capability isn’t there: “We’re not making the loudspeaker.
“Fundamentally, the first goal is to make something that’s more coherent in the off-axis, thereby making it a more predictable tool,” he continues. “Very simply, when you don’t need to know anything, you use one of our systems. It doesn’t matter which one, the Contour, the Tower Column; you’re going to put five or 10 microphones out for the band, and you’re all going to hear the monitors better because the off-axis is more predictable.” The result: less feedback, less noise pollution and a more musical sound off-axis, he adds, “because the cancellation marries the high-frequency delivery. That’s the fundamental approach.”
As for how the company intends to expand on that: “We’re getting more fine-tuned and making this on a larger scale; buildable blocks of, say, point sources that, when arrayed, sound as musical as our current loudspeakers do in the near field, in the far field. That’s something I’ve been working on for several years. So, I think that it’s the pursuit of control in the off-axis and how the brain perceives it over time. That’s the technology driving the majority of our existing products, and those we make moving forward.”
However, Julia adds, “1 SOUND’s technology and the speakers we’re making, they’re one thing. But I think the big innovation here is our service, our support, and how we communicate and deal with people.”
SETTING STANDARDS
Michael Wolk and Julia Mannarino presenting the Custom Shop
The Custom Shop is an example of that, as is the insistence on using U.S.-sourced materials and components. “We come from the industry. We’re also hands-on builders, engineers, and workers. So, for us, it was a big deal to be ‘Made in the USA,’ to have everything in stock,” Julia says. “And also, we’re listening. At our Global Partner Summit, we ended up saying, ‘Some of these speakers are designed by you.’ It’s not just my dad thinking of something. It’s coming from what the industry wants.”
As with the products, the custom work is meant to solve problems, better the relationships between the various stakeholders working on projects, and provide better outcomes – sonically and visually – overall.
“We use the Custom Shop like a design service,” she continues. “We call it the Custom Shop Concierge Service. That’s where I speak to architects or interior designers, either directly or through integrators and the person designing it. I’ll go back and forth on colors, review their renderings and swatches. We work (together). They’re directly involved in the audio design process, so they feel heard, and then, because they’re all communicating, because of the relationship between everyone involved, the end result is a stronger project.”
That begs the question: How custom is custom?
“Custom starts with stock speakers, so you don’t have to spend extra for custom. We actually have over 200 custom options for speakers at a stock price. That can be overwhelming, so we’ve done our best to package that so, for example, you’ll see twelve grille fabric colors and three steps of how to pick out your combinations. You can get pretty custom with just the base, which means the turnaround time is one to five days, depending on order size.”
Turnaround time naturally may change owing to requests for custom colors or specific types of wood, for example. “We don’t change the shape of a loudspeaker, but we customize the texture on the cabinet, the design on the cabinet. We collaborate with artists. We did polka dots on one speaker,” she adds, chuckling. “We can even customize rigging, because sometimes people have challenges with how to rig something in a specific scenario. So we’ve built custom mounts or designs to help them.”
Again, that’s a longstanding element of Lou’s approach – not just as an entrepreneur, audio designer, and manufacturer – as an engineer and mixer. Which is, as he’s previously described it: “If I make a mistake, I say so. If I don’t know something, I say so.” Most importantly, he says, he listens. “When musicians try to express what they want, when they ask for something in their monitors, but it isn’t readily clear as to what that ‘something’ actually is, I’ll go up on stage, and listen from their perspective.”
Wolk sums it up: “It’s about bringing value to the table. Lou has a tremendous respect for his co-creators in the industry. So, one of the things, I think, that makes 1 SOUND successful is when we’re bringing something to the market, it’s not really competing with anybody. It’s new in a very real way. If we’re bringing a five-inch driver in a point source format to market, it has to have, say, two more notes of musical information and extended frequency response, or we create a loudspeaker with very effective cardioid behavior, more than what’s readily available, even if it costs twice as much to make it.
These are the tools that Lou felt were missing from his toolkit in the past; audio gear that’s use-case driven. As an example, Julia cites a project a Canadian partner was supporting for Holt Renfrew. “They loved our loudspeakers, but they preferred a different type of accessory to what we had to deploy them. So Lou talked with the client, came up with an idea for something different, and now, that’s part of our accessory line.”
“Very often, we’re hearing from customers, dealers, and users who say, ‘This is great, but I wish it did this, too. So Lou will say, ‘Great idea. We’re going to do that, and not just for you, we’re going to provide it for everybody.”
