Todd Metlen

From Concept to Reality

Sound Advice is an award winning design consultancy, product creation and business strategy firm based in Ojai, California.

We bring together innovative, patented technology and stunning industrial design to create compelling luxury, professional and consumer electronics products.

Our Services

Industrial Design

Electrical Engineering

Acoustical Tuning

Prototyping / R&D

MFG Management

Mechanical Engineering

System Architecture

IP Research & Filing

Business Strategy

Global Sourcing

Meet the Team

The Grand Poobah
Todd Metlen has been designing world-class products for almost 30 years and is the named inventor in over 2 dozen patents.
His clients past and present include: Vertu, Nokia, BMW, Microsoft, AKG, JBL, Blue Microphones, Mojave, Electrovoice, Dangerous Music and Lynx Studio.
Many of the product he has designed have been award-winning and top selling in their category.

The King of Awesome
Over the last four decades Mike has consulted on hundreds of projects for large and small clients, including DuPont, Bell Labs, Nike, Intel, Microsoft, Yamaha, Teijin, Cisco, Echelon, 3Com, Armstrong World Industries, Johns Mansville, Owens Corning, Niles, NuTone, Polk, AuraSound, B&C, Klipsch, Ferrofluidics, Transilwrap, Apple, and Acer, among many others.
Notable projects include the long range (6 mile distance) sound systems in the DMZ between North and South Korea, sound system for the 1988 Olympic games in South Korea, the Microsoft X-box headset, the Dr. Dre headphone and commercialization of the Klippel KCS process with Nuvoton.
Mike has over 500 articles published in many electronics and audio magazines and technical journals and was the Technical Editor of Sound & Communications magazine for ten years, and to this day continues to be a regular contributor for audioXpress and Voice Coil magazines. Invited papers have been presented at the Acoustical Society of America, he has held positions as Session Organizer at the Audio Engineering society, Chairman of the Committee on Acoustics, and AES Life Member and a Pillar Chairman for the AES APEI education institute. He has a dozen patents licensed or assigned to the Variable Speech Control Company, Yamaha, Teijin, Armstrong World Industries, and others.

The Audio Ninja
Jim Tuomy is an accomplished engineer who has designed, built, and tuned dozens of audio/video products for consumer, professional, and musical instrument markets. He currently holds eight US and EU patents with another five applications pending.
At one point or another he has worked for or with nearly all the industry leaders, including Bose, AR, Voxx, Cleer, Soul, House of Marley, Sharper Image, Phasx, EAW, Crosspoint, Harman, and many, many others.
Jim’s current specialty is in combining DSP with Electro-Acoustics in order to achieve new paradigms in performance for audio systems.

Grand Master of Underlings
Mike Etchart brings a broad and extensive collection of experiences to Sound Advice Consulting.
Mike had an extensive career in the recorded music industry, serving as an executive at the Warner Music Group, Capitol/EMI and Universal Music Groups in both artist development and advanced technologies. He also has a broad understanding and experiences in analog and digital recording equipment, as well as project management experience in the design, manufacturing and product development of consumer electronics and musical instrument related products.
On the media side of things, he was the on-air host of the syndicated radio program Sound & Vision Radio for Sound and Vision magazine for more than a decade. He currently co-hosts the Your Morning Coffee weekly podcast, which covers stories, topics and issues related to the new streaming music business, and produces content for NPR and public radio. He is also a gigging musician with a passion for vintage keyboards and guitars.
https://yourmorning.coffee/home#who-we-are

VP of Time and Space
Greg is a producer, mixer, engineer, songwriter and musician who has been at the forefront of recording and recording technology for more than 30 years.
His credits include producer for k.d. lang’s Grammy winning albums Absolute Torch and Twang and Ingenue, which won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Performance. He also produced Elton John’s Made in England album, one of Elton’s biggest selling albums of his catalog.
Greg has also been an early adopter of mixing in surround sound, and more recently immersive mixing in Dolby Atmos, having mixed the very first song in that format (Elton John’s Rocket Man). He has mixed more than 500 tracks in Dolby Atmos in the last two years, and was nominated for a Grammy in 2022 for Best Immersive Mix on the Harry Styles track Fine Line. He was also nominated for a 2006 Grammy for his surround mix of Elton John’s Honky Chateau.
Greg’s deep understanding of software development has been instrumental in the refinement of software tools for Dolby’s Atmos system and Sony Electronics 360 Reality Audio, as well as testing consumer products for Amazon. Greg has also been a consultant with the Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.

Startup Whisperer
Maxim brings experience to the team as an exited startup founder, and as a startup executive having scaled multiple companies from idea to 60+ employees.
He is skilled in building strategic partnerships, developing supply-chain relationships, developing multidisciplinary product teams, and on intellectual property strategy and development.
He is an inventor on 10+ patents both issued and pending, a 2x winner of the CES Innovation Award, an Edison Award winner, and a graduate of Georgetown University where he studied Cognitive Science.