Arnie Nudell (1937-2017)

A star of the audio industry has fallen. Arnie Nudell passed away from complications of pnuemonia and his family put him to rest on Monday, November 20, 2017, according to an account by Bill Leebens on his Facebook page. Generations of burgeoning audiophiles grew up reading about Arnie’s pioneering accomplishments, from his tenure at Infinity to his own Genesis Technologies. Arnie and I chatted at the 2003 Stereophile Show in San Francisco, a name change prompted by the purchase of the company by Gary Koh in 2002. Arnie was taking a break from show demonstration outside the room. His admirers in a long queue to the room looked on as we conversed.

The following is an eulogy for Arnie Nudell, written by Gary Koh on his Facebook page. Reprinted with permission.

Remembering Arnie Nudell (1937-2017), founder of high-end audio

I first met Arnie in April 2002, when I visited him to try to convince him to build me a pair of Genesis 1’s after his company closed down the previous year. He cooked us both lunch at home – a wonderful seafood risotto – and ended up convincing ME to purchase the assets and inventory of Genesis from the bank that had foreclosed on Genesis Technologies.

Genesis Advanced Technologies was started less than 4 months later with a manufacturing facility in Seattle, WA and we set up a lab for Arnie to continue with his design work in Eagle, CO. I hired Arnie as the Chief Scientist, where he worked until his retirement in 2006.

Through Genesis, his legacy lives on. We continue to push the state-of-the-art and develop and innovative products on the foundation that Arnie built: the servo-controlled woofer, the four-tower line-source loudspeaker systems, the ribbon midrange and ribbon tweeters, and most of all the focus on music first.

Rest in Peace, Arnie.