HARMAN Innovator Spotlight: Alexander Voishvillo, JBL Loudspeakers

HARMAN Professional Solutions has a variety of brilliant talents working in every part of the business, and nowhere is that more true than for our engineering team. This is the idea behind the “innovator” series, our look at some of the great minds we have working on the technology we develop here at HARMAN. We don’t take terms like “innovator” lightly and we don’t use the term “brilliant” with just anybody. However, for Alexander Voishvillo, Director, Distinguished Engineer, Transducer Engineering, “brilliant” is clearly accurate. An academic and long-time researcher, Dr. Voishvillo literally wrote the book on loudspeaker theory and design in 1985.

Voishvillo is a true student of sound. He received a master’s degree in electroacoustics from the Saint Petersburg University of Telecommunications before going on to perform research for the Popov Institute for Radio and Acoustics, a major audio research center for the Soviet centralized economy. While at the Popov Institute, Voishvillo performed loudspeaker research, authored publications on loudspeaker theory. He also designed loudspeaker systems and studio monitors for use by the Soviet audio industry. He later went on to get a Ph.D. from St. Petersburg University of Telecommunications for the computer optimization of loudspeaker crossover networks in 1987.

After working in research and development for a number of years, Voishvillo joined HARMAN in 2004, and his innovations have appeared in a number of JBL products. One of his most well-known designs was a phasing plug, a part of the speaker’s transducer that compression loads the diaphragm to increase the speaker’s output and efficiency. Voishvillo’s design altered the way phasing plugs had been designed for 70 years, and his innovation resulted in an ultra-smooth frequency response and wide bandwidth, a distinguishing feature for products such as JBL’s M2 studio monitor (something we’ve written about before) and the renowned JBL VTX V25 line array.

D2430K driver exploded view

In 2008 Alexander was awarded AES Fellowship for his research works in loudspeakers and audio. As a member of the AES Standard Committee and recipient of an ALMA, “The Titanium Driver Award,” Voishvillo has a deep love of sound and audio technology, and that does come up outside of work as well. A reviewer of the Journal of Audio Engineering Society, he enjoys reading technical literature and writes AES articles and ALMA presentations on weekends. He’s also a guitarist, and he loves to listen to his large music collection.

Voishvillo is married and has two children. He and his wife enjoy travelling, and he enjoys physical activities such as exercising in the summer and skiing with friends in the winter. He also likes working on his house, and says, “There is always something to fix.”

I’d like to offer a big thanks to Alexander Voishvillo for taking the time to speak with us and for all of his contributions to HARMAN. Would you like to work with innovators like Alexander? Visit jobs.HARMAN.com to see available openings. Have stories about working with Alexander? Share them in the comments.