The Ocean Way Audio Story
Our company roots were built over 40 years ago when a teenaged musician, recording enthusiast, and audio systems designer, Allen Sides, was designing and testing hi-fi speaker systems. Allen’s audio designs got their first professional tests when he opened a recording studio in a garage on a suburban street called Ocean Way in Santa Monica, CA. Developing a fast reputation for the great sounds he captured there, Allen began selling his custom speakers to musicians and celebrities in the Los Angeles area. When the neighbors started complaining about the loud music emanating from the garage late at night, Allen rented a room at the famed United Western Recorders complex on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Eventually, his custom speaker designs ended up in use throughout the facility where some of the most iconic recordings in history were captured. In 1988, when Allen purchased the studios, they were renamed Ocean Way Recording.
The Origins of Ocean Way Monitoring Systems
Allen’s speaker designs remained in high demand, and over the years, he created a multitude of custom loudspeaker systems for other commercial studios, personal recording facilities, and home listening environments. In 2007, he formally began to market his speaker designs as Ocean Way Monitors, and eventually the company expanded distribution to Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East.
2012: Ocean Way Audio
Recognizing the popularity of Allen Sides’ unique approach to speaker design, Ocean Way began to create more compact speaker systems for recording studios and audiophiles. The company also began to expand into new areas, like microphone design and software. Since then, we’ve been known as Ocean Way Audio, with our award-winning products available via the best professional audio dealers in the United States and at qualified international distributors worldwide.
More About Allen Sides
Allen Sides is a five-time Grammy winning engineer/producer who has worked on over a thousand albums. A few of the artists he has worked with include Ray Charles, Mary J. Blige, Aretha Franklin, Green Day, Joni Mitchell, Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, Vince Gill, Alanis Morissette, Ry Cooder, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith.
He designed and built The Legendary Ocean Way Studio group which includes Ocean Way Studios Hollywood, Record One Studios Sherman Oaks, Ocean Way Studios Nashville and Ocean Way Saint Barths. Albums recorded in his studios have sold in excess of one billion copies.
He is also CEO of Ocean Way Audio which includes Ocean Way Monitor systems, Ocean Way Drum Sample libraries, Ocean Way microphones, OWR studio designs and The Allen Sides Microphone Cabinet App.
His most recent products, The Ocean Way Studios Plug-In and the Ocean Way Microphone Collection Plug-In, are a collaboration with Bill Putnam and Universal Audio.
