Audio Research
Audio Research Corporation was founded in Minnesota by William Zane Johnson in 1970. It was part of McIntosh Group until 2020 when it was sold to former employees. Today it is part of TWS enterprises.
In the early '70s, as the rest of the home audio industry moved toward transistors, Bill Johnson stuck with vacuum tubes. In doing so, he was integral to the creation of the high-end audio marketplace we know today. He was visionary not only for his faith that consumers would willingly pay more for better sound reproduction, but also for his foresight that the market would eventually move away from the cheaper, inferior transistors back to tubes. Today ARC is best known for its Reference amps, preamps, analog phono stages and DACs.