Clifford A. Henricksen

Cliff Henricksen is a musician, inventor and audio technologist.

He is self-taught as a musician with a graduate degree in mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Throughout his career Cliff has found innovative ways to apply engineering basics to electro acoustics and to audio technology as it applies to music and in particular to live music performance.

He has invented and engineered a wide variety of technologies and products well known in the world of professional audio.

Today he balances work in audio and work as a performing musician.

Cliff Henricksen was born on July 12, 1943, in Kew Gardens on Long Island NY, the son of Norwegian immigrant Birger ("Bill") and Alice (née Totland) Henricksen, and grew up in Elmont, New York.

His father's early career was as first-engineer on ocean-going ships for the Moore McCormack Company.

He subsequently took a land-based day job as a mechanic and welder in order to participate more actively in home and family life.

He also became an accomplished musician, playing accordion, drums and fiddle, and performing as a well-known square dance caller with a country music band called "The Ranch Boys".

He also played drums at nightclub gigs and was bandleader of his own "society orchestra" that played events in venues like New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

It was his father's facility with all things mechanical, as well as his love of music and his fascination with the technology behind the music, which was the single most important influence in Cliff's formative years.

Microphones, PA systems, home hi-fi systems, and tape recorders were a constant and ever-evolving part of the Henricksen household and played a significant role in shaping Cliff's technical and artistic sensibilities.

By the time he got to graduate school at MIT, Cliff was playing regularly with a Boston-based cover band while still managing to make it to his 8 a.m. engineering lectures.

He also met his future wife, then Bonnie Zimmermann, and together they started a family that grew to include 9 children (5 boys and 4 girls).

Today Cliff and his wife Bonnie make their home in Framingham MA.

Cliff began his career in professional audio by starting a research group at Altec Lansing in Anaheim CA in 1974.

In the course of that work he met and became friends with Bill Putnam and Allen Sides, both of whom became important inspirations for achieving a balance between audio aesthetics and engineering excellence.

Putnam's work on the UREI Time Align studio monitor loudspeaker, and Side's work through his Ocean Way studio business (then operating out of a garage in Santa Monica CA) were fundamental and profound influences in showing Cliff how to listen diagnostically to the audio qualities of speakers, microphones and music electronics generally.

The importance of "audio aesthetics first" has been a guiding principle in all of Cliff's work since that time.

Because of this code of work and his experience as a performing musician, Cliff is one of the few audio professionals able to voice major arena sound systems by ear and to develop L1 and T1 "Tone Match" presets for Bose Corporation strictly by listening.

A lifelong musician, Cliff Henricksen is aware of the importance of the musical arts and their benefits to society that transcend technology.

As an experienced player and composer, he knows this from a true artist's perspective.

As an MIT-educated scientist and engineer he has also made it his life's work to bring innovation to the technology associated with the business of professional audio and musical performance.

He has held key senior technical positions at Altec Lansing (Anaheim CA), Community Professional Systems, Electro-Voice, US Sound and Bose Corporation, where he was a key contributor to the invention, development and commercial launch of breakthrough technologies and products that have advanced and inspired the art of live music and professional/engineered sound for over 40 years.

In doing so, he was able to contribute directly to enhanced market presence and increased business for his employers.

He was co-owner of US Sound, a "super contractor" with a patented and proprietary sound system components and overall system concept of his creation.

It was called "Coherent Zone Technology".

Engineered systems were installed, first, in the OMNI Arena (Atlanta) and later at Madison Square Garden (New York City) and used for many years for normal MSG events of all kinds.

A road system was developed for The Judds and for solo shows of Wynonna Judd, mixed by house engineer John Cooper, and for Bruce Springsteen in collaboration with Audio Analysts of Colorado Springs.

US Sound was sold at its prime to Bose Corporation where its product line (renamed "Panaray LT") still is the mainstay of Bose's large-venue engineered sound business.

At Bose, Cliff went on to invent the famous "L1" line array and co-developed technologies and methodologies used in current "Room Match" and "Show Match" systems.

After a long career working for well-known professional audio companies Cliff started Cliff Innovations LLC in Framingham MA, where he developed new electroacoustic technologies and new, advanced ribbon microphone concepts, for use in recording and broadcasting.

Using the new concepts for ribbon microphones, he later started the "Cliff Mics" company and introduced the RM1 ribbon microphone to the professional market at the summer Audio Engineering Society's 2014 convention in Los Angeles.

This microphone used large Neodymium magnets to achieve unprecedented raw transduction sensitivity.

Also, a unique phantom-powered preamplifier with proprietary voicing gave the microphone a sound presentation similar to large-diaphragm condenser microphones but having the well-known dynamic qualities unique to ribbon microphones.

At this show, he was reunited with old friend Allen Sides, Grammy-winning owner of famous Ocean Way recording studios and Ocean Way Audio.

Allen listened to the mic at the show.

Amazed at what he heard, he offered to help Cliff promote and distribute the microphone.

Cliff in turn offered to help Allen with new original loudspeaker designs.

And so, they formed a "strategic alliance" defined by a personal contract, which is in place as of this writing (8/4/2021)