John A. Westlake

John Alexander Westlake (born July 1970) – a Hi Fi designer of British and Czech origin.

Career

Westlake started his Hi Fi career in his early twenties while working for a Hi Fi company Pink Triangle. He designed the Pink Triangle DaCapo digital to analog converter in 1995. He then moved on working for Cambridge Audio, designing many of their award winning products - Cambridge Audio DACMagic digital to analog converter, CD4, CD4SE, CD6, DAC 123, ISO Magic etc.

He has also been working with semiconductor companies that patent some of his technologies: UK patent on Feedback controller for PWM amplifier, International patent on a signal processing circuit. John Westlake is known for his work on Class D amplifier technology.

In 2008, after years of research and working for semiconductor companies, he started his own company - Lakewest Audio & returned to designing Hi Fi products. He is the designer behind the Peachtree Audio Nova D / A integrated amplifier that was voted a Budget Product of the Year 2009 by Stereophile magazine.^[1] Peachtree Decco2 integrated amplifier & the Peachtree iDecco – Tube Hybrid Integrated Amp with "Pure Digital" iPod Dock. His designs also include the Audiolab 8200 CD player – an award winning Best Product of the Year 2010 and Best Product of the Year 2011 by What HiFi Sound & Vision magazine.^[2][3]

This was followed by the Audiolab 8200CDQ – an all in one CD player, DAC and pre-amplifier. His most successful addition to the Audiolab product line was the original M-DAC,^[4] a standalone D/A converter - which was voted Best Product of the Year 2011 by What HiFi Sound & Vision magazine^[5] and which utilised the ESS SABRE32 ES9018 chip. He later began a crowd-funded follow-up project called the FDAC (Fusion DAC) for his own company Lakewest Audio.^[6]

Patents

• UK Patent 65135GB on "Feedback Controller for PWM Amplifier"
• United States of America Patent 7046080 on "A Signal Processing Circuit"

References