About Us

CommonSense Audio

At CommonSense Audio, we've been active as audio hobbyists for more than 50 years.  We started designing, building, and selling our own speaker designs more than 25 years ago.  This came about because we found that almost all modern speakers exhibit what we call 'The Four D's'--they sound dead, dull, dark, and distant.  We believe that most modern speakers are designed to 'test well', but that most speaker companies don't seem to care what they actually sound like.  People don't listen in anechoic chambers, but in real rooms.  It's our opinion that most vintage speakers from the 50's, 60's, and 70's sound better than what's available in the stores today.  This led us to start collecting vintage speakers (and other electronics) and eventually led to designing modern cabinets for vintage speaker 'drivers.'

In our worldwide search for the best sounding speakers, we eventually discovered single-driver full range speakers.  These speakers are very unusual, as they use only a single full range driver with no crossover.  Yet they still extend to the lowest bass notes and the highest treble.  We started by carrying other company's full range speakers.  But, because of problems with all of them, this led to our own Audio Nirvana designs.

In addition to smaller full range speakers, Audio Nirvana is the only company in the world that has ever made true full range speakers larger than 8 inches.   Audio Nirvana currently offers 8 and 15 inch speakers that require no tweeter.  We don't build larger full range for more bass (though it's nice to have), but because they have the most detailed and musical midrange and smoothest treble.  Why?  Probably because these larger full-range speakers are closer in size to the things they're trying to reproduce:  guitars, violins, horns........the human diaphragm.  Once you've heard one of our full range speakers, you will never be able to listen to anything else.  They are that good.

We provide free cabinet plans, a parts list, and setup tips so customers can build their own cabinets.  We offer more than 12 different designs.  We also work with custom cabinetmakers who can build any of these designs, as well as custom cabinets requested by the customer.  We will design custom cabinets, for free, if the customer buys the speakers from us.

In cooperation with a very experienced amplifier designer, Audio Nirvana has also introduced its own vacuum tube amplifiers.  Again using more than 50 years experience, with hundreds of amplifiers, we settled on an EL84 Ultralinear push/pull design.  These are probably the only amplifiers in the world that were developed exclusively while listening to high efficiency, full range speakers.

Feel free to email: sales@1speaker.com or call at any time.  Thanks for your interest in our company.