Celestion Presents an Interview with Paul Hales, Owner and CEO of Theory Professional

From its conception in 2018, Theory knew that if they were going to bring real value to the residential, commercial, and professional installation market, that they needed to be different.  With that as their inspiration, they quickly became renowned for providing unique, high-performance products with innovative form factors and a strong focus on sound quality that sets them apart from competitors. Celestion is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Paul Hales, the Owner and CEO of Theory Professional, where he shares his formative years, the origins of the company, their philosophies, culture, innovations, the future of their business, and his favourite music.

What is your favourite album of all time and why?

I find it difficult to name just one, but if pressured, I would narrow it down to Radiohead’s OK Computer and In Rainbows, and Counting Crows’ August and Everything After. With Radiohead, I appreciate Thom York’s melodic singing, and the complex textures and layering they achieve in their compositions, which combine progressive rock elements with beautiful melodies.  A number of their songs, Exit Music for a Film, The Tourist, and Lucky are just beautiful rock compositions.

How did you get started in the audio industry?

My interest stemmed from a combination of a love for music and my father’s background in hi-fi, as he built things like Heathkits and speakers using JBL drivers. I was exposed to music from a young age through my sisters, who were 10 years older than me. They turned me on to the Beatles and early 70s popular music.  When I was five or six, I remember receiving my very first record, a 45 of Hey Jude. Then I just embraced music, especially in late middle school and high school, I listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of music every month in high school.

In grade school, I played drums and cymbals in the band, and then in middle school, my parents bought me a Ludwig drum set, and I had a band with friends playing popular music of the time, like Kiss.

Then, the little stereo I had broke. It was an all-in-one AM/FM receiver with an 8-track on the front and a record player on top. My dad would normally just fix it, but in this case, he couldn’t. I had been driving my parents crazy with the drumming and he said “Why don’t you sell that stupid drum set and buy a real stereo,” and so I did that. I got a good amount of money for the drum kit and spent $670 on a Hi-Fi system.  It was 1977, so that was a pretty decent rig, especially for a 12-year-old, and then I was hooked!

My interest in audio equipment grew from there. I designed and built my first speakers at 16, purposefully taking a woodwork class in high school to construct the cabinets. I even built my own crossovers.  I really loved the whole process, the concepts of engineering, industrial design, being able to style these things. That inspired me to go to college with the intent of starting a speaker business, and I tailored my coursework at UC Davis to loudspeaker applications.

How did you get started in the business itself? Take us on your path to Theory Professional.

I started my first commercial speaker company, Hales Design Group, in 1988, focusing on high-end audiophile products. During the 1990s, I gained notoriety in the audiophile segment and devoted thousands of hours to correlating measured data with perceived sound quality.

Towards the late 90s, I got disillusioned with audiophile products and all the industry dogma, in general. Hi-Fi sound is small and polite. Many of the technologies used in Hi-Fi products, including the widely used dome tweeters are very inefficient and can’t convey the real power and dynamics of live music.

This feeling of disillusionment led me to join QSC in 2000 as their first employee on the loudspeaker side, establishing their R&D department for speakers. I spent four years designing professional speakers for various applications, learning how to create speakers with exceptional dynamic range that also sounded like hi-fi speakers. This has been my unique value proposition for the last 25 years.

This approach now underpins two businesses: Pro Audio Technology, which caters to high-end private screening rooms with commercial cinema-style speakers that offer hi-fi accuracy, and Theory Audio Design (Theory Professional), which extends this approach to broader residential, commercial, and professional applications. I am the owner and CEO of both companies.

Theory Professional is renowned in the industry. In your viewpoint, what’s the main reason for that?

Our primary strength is our ability to achieve exceptional levels of accuracy in speakers, including large-format sound reinforcement systems. Theory Professional offers a unique approach in the small-to-medium commercial installed sound and sound reinforcement segments. While other brands often replicate existing designs, our products are entirely different; they are made from aluminium, feature high-end proprietary transducers, which Celestion supplies, and boast unique, compact, and shallow form factors. This innovative product, combined with hi-fi sound quality and high output, alongside a focus on superior design, has been very well-received by the market.

What do you believe your most innovative product or service is?

Our general philosophy is to keep our product catalogue simple, which in our competitors, we find to be overly complicated with hundreds of similar products. We aim for a more streamlined and premium approach, similar to Porsche’s car philosophy of offering fewer, highly effective models. A specific example of this is our ic6 Acoustic Core, a six-inch ceiling speaker that can also function as a pendant loudspeaker or a landscape loudspeaker when mounted in appropriate enclosures. This standardisation simplifies inventory and maintenance for our customers, allowing a single part to serve multiple audio needs.

Outside of your company, what do you think has been the single most important technological achievement in our industry?

That’s a tough one, and normally, I spend more time talking about the absence of technological advancements in our industry, particularly in loudspeakers. I have a supercomputer in my pocket and we have artificial intelligence now, but some speaker brands are still making the same models that they introduced in the 1970s. So, on the loudspeaker side, there hasn’t been that much innovation.

Expanding to our industry in general, I believe the most significant achievement has been the advent and refinement of Class D audio amplification. Class D amplifiers have benefitted the industry by becoming much more efficient, lighter, and smaller, significantly reducing the size and weight of equipment racks while increasing power output. Crucially, their performance is now on par with linear amplifiers.

What is the accomplishment you’re most proud of?

I am proud of helping QSC develop their corporate logo and industrial design language for loudspeakers, which became distinctive yet tasteful and are still in use today, 25 years later. We began with a goal of making QSC loudspeakers identifiable from across the room, and they still are.

However, I am probably most proud of the conception and positive reception of Theory Professional as a brand. We set out to disrupt the status quo, and despite being a small team, we are executing at a very high level, leading to early success with high-end projects and rapid industry adoption.

Can you talk about the culture of your organisation and how you like to lead?

Theory Professional operates with a small group of highly effective and dedicated individuals. Our culture revolves around high performance; we are a team of smart, hardworking people striving to achieve significant goals. We value individuals who are naturally driven to work hard, accomplish great things, and gain satisfaction from their achievements.

To put it more obnoxiously, I have a sign outside of my office that reads “No stupid people beyond this point,” but “We only like to hire smart people,” might be a more polite way to say it.

How are you poised for the future?

We believe our future lies primarily in the commercial install side of the business, where we have already achieved early success with significant projects. Theory is establishing itself as a recognised brand in the residential market and is quickly gaining traction commercially since introducing Theory Professional in 2023. As a smaller business, our resilience and ability to quickly adapt to industry changes and customer demands gives us an advantage over larger companies that might find it harder to pivot rapidly. Our strong customer relationships and reliance on referrals also position us for continued growth, as new client relationships often begin with recommendations.

We started talking about your favourite album of all time, but what are you enjoying listening to these days?

I listen to two main types of music. For relaxation, I often stream a playlist of slow classical music based on Erik Satie, it’s mostly music from the late 1800s Impressionist era, such as Claude Debussy. When not relaxing, I listen to a wide range of genres, from classical to metal. When I am not trying to relax, our team at Theory Professional has a playlist called “Ones We Really Like”, featuring songs across various decades and genres, including 1950s acoustic jazz, early rock and roll, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Moody Blues, and 90s popular music.

But my favourite band is Tool and if they come out with a new album then I’ll listen to that non-stop for a couple of months straight. I was on an airplane flying to China for the first production run of Theory products and their Fear Inoculum record had just been released. I put on my earbuds, pressed play and thought, “what is happening inside my head right now?” I was obsessed with that record because of the complexity, the intelligence, and the polyrhythms between the bandmates. So, until a new Tool album comes out, I’ll probably stay with the playlist.