Sonance / TRUFIG

By Bruce Stanley

In 1982 I ran across a product that became a major “tipping point” for our industry. This product was designed and built by a relatively unknown company called Sonance founded by Scott Struthers and Geoff Spencer.

Sonance was the first company to address architecture and audio. Their first product was the SC-1 speaker. It was designed to install flush into a wall or ceiling, and offered a very high standard of sound quality. Not only was the product aesthetically attractive, it was also very reasonably priced. It was the first product of its kind to achieve such a feat.

Up until the development of this product, if a customer wanted speakers to fit into a wall or ceiling, they either had to have them custom built, or settle for low-fidelity commercial-quality “background” speakers which were visually unattractive.

Upon visiting our store, Scott suggested we “install a pair of these speakers and see what happens.” We took up Scott’s suggestion and installed a pair of the SC-1’s into one of our speaker demo rooms. I admit I was a little skeptical at first as to what the response would be to such a speaker. Well, that skepticism went right out the window when the sales immediately took off for these speakers. Instead of our customers buying a single pair of speakers at a time, many of them would buy several pairs, deciding to have music throughout their homes rather than in a single room.

We soon found ourselves going out and installing these speakers in customer homes and with it, launched a whole new business for us – “custom installation” of whole-house audio & video systems!

Demand for Sonance products took off and as a result, we became involved working with some of the Northwest’s finest architects, builders and interior designers.

Over the last 25 years, Sonance has grown into a very large supplier of innovative high-performance speakers and electronics. The appeal of their products is the emphasis on blending architecture, design, and audio performance.

But this article is not about Sonance speakers but, Scott’s latest venture, “TRUFIG.”

TRUFIG has developed a product line that addresses the issue of what many architects term “wall acne” (unsightly wall receptacles & devices). The new TRUFIG products are “platforms” that are installed into a wall and create a seamless, clean look without the unsightly raised electrical plastic cover plates and volume control knobs or raised keypad facias. The product provides a dramatically cleaner look. The picture above doesn't really do it justice. We invite you to come and see them installed in our showroom.

The response from the design community for the new TRUFIG products has been fantastic, mirroring the success Sonance enjoyed when they first entered the in-wall speaker business in the early 1980’s.

Looking back, I’m grateful that I took Scott’s advice to “Install a pair of these speakers and see what happens.” And now again, I truly believe that they have invented then next “SC-1” in the form of TRUFIG. I am confident that it will revolutionize the control surfaces on the walls as SC-1 did for in-wall speakers.