A high school dropout at age 14, Brady Gunn went against the odds to successfully launch manufacturer Gunn Audio in 2010. Now, through the company’s latest venture, the Gunn Audio SX Smart Speaker Series, he’s taking on the wireless audio market. Callum Fitzpatrick reports.

It’s no secret that the distribution of recorded music is increasingly moving towards a streaming model, with services such as Spotify, Pandora and Rdio becoming more popular every day. The challenge for audio equipment manufacturers has been in providing simple platforms with which to listen to this format, without scrimping on sound quality.

Gunn Audio is the latest company to take a shot at the market. It’s aiming to simplify the process and unlock more streaming options for end users through its SX Smart Speaker Series. Using an inbuilt Android tablet, the system communicates with speakers via WiFi.

“No more hassle of connecting phones or computers. Just turn on and tune in to sound easily extendible in any room in the house,” Gunn Audio founder Brady Gunn says.

“You don’t want to have to load up your computer to stream and you don’t need to involve your phone either. Simply connect the speakers wirelessly to your home router and stream your music from your favourite app or site.”

A high school dropout at age 14, Brady says he was on a downward spiral until the death of his best friend at age 17.

“That really turned my life around – I started learning how to be a man and I started to coach in schools and youth centres, working with kids just like me. Young people with an attitude.”

Brady had some luck, winning enough money to take him on a trip around the world, to places he’d never dreamed of, like Afghanistan, Mongolia and the Amazon.

“When the money ran out I used my credit card to found a business in London. That business grew to 35 people before we sold it,” he says.

“At that point I was a serial entrepreneur with experience in ecommerce and retail electronics. I guess I’ve been driven to this point to do what any good entrepreneur does – solve a problem no one else has solved.”

Brady set up Gunn Audio in 2010 and a year later started designing what would eventually become the Gunn SX speakers.

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the SX system is just a set of speakers with a free tablet. In fact, they’re much more than that.

“It really is quite an advanced system,” Brady explains. “WiFi is built directly into the speakers and this allows them to communicate with the home router. On top of that, a dedicated Gunn Audio interface has been designed for the Android system, and this is customised to control and ‘talk’ to the speakers. And because it is built on an Android platform, it’s completely open source. Those with a technical knowhow can customise the entire system if they want.

“It’s essentially the matching of some very powerful technologies. You can download all the apps you usually would from the Play Store and they can all be used. Unlike other systems, you aren’t limited. You can use Spotify and all the usual services you would stream from, or you can stream music directly from a web browser.”

Brady says that he knew the company was on the right track when it exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last year.

“I was slightly scared because I had designed a great set of speakers, which made so much sense to me, but I assumed that some of the bigger companies would have been building something similar,” he says.

“When we visited CES it was a major relief to find that nobody else was doing anything like this.”

The Eureka moment originally came to Brady when he was living in London back in 2009. 

“I came across Spotify when it first launched in the UK and it was clear to me that streaming was going to be the future of music,” he recalls.

“However, there were no good streaming solutions. Even today you need a third party device to control your speakers. To users that can’t afford a system like Sonos, their next option is to connect their smart phone or tablet using Bluetooth. However, that isn’t the best signal – it drops out and music stops playing when your phone rings. What’s more, if you’re trying to use your device at a party, you can have other phones in the room interfering. That’s why it makes so much sense to have the tablet built into the speakers communicating through WiFi.”

Brady notes that using a third party device does have the advantage of being able to control your audio remotely. That’s why Gunn Audio has also introduced an app which works in synchronisation with the system.

“We offer Bluetooth, DLNA and AirPlay compatibility with the app,” he says. “What’s more, if you decide that you don’t want to stream your music, the tablet also carries USB, HDMI and auxiliary inputs, as well as a flash drive in the speakers.”

The SX series was due for an earlier launch, but the Gunn team wanted to fine tune the sound quality until it was completely satisfied with the sound.

“Developing these speakers was a two year process. Half of that was spent meticulously improving the sound quality,” Brady says.

“We have put a lot of stress into getting the best possible sound out of these that we could. We could have approached the whole process a lot differently, making them smaller and cheaper, but we designed them to have thick, rich sound, even at low volume, as well as really good bass response and high end definition.

“We couldn’t be happier with the result.”