Jean-Marie Lière · Designer & founder
A life spent listening.
From piano at home and jazz in Paris to a new generation of Australian loudspeakers: a story of curiosity, character and the pursuit of musical presence.
Explore the story ↘
01 / Origins
It began with the sound of a piano.
Long before the circuits and cabinets, Jean-Marie’s mother and grandmother were playing music at home.
That early reference expanded into Paris jazz clubs, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Vienna’s Musikverein and, later, the Sydney Opera House. Each place offered a different lesson in how music fills a room.
These are not claims that a speaker can reproduce a concert hall. They explain the ears—and the life—behind the design.
A listening life
The technology matters because the music matters. Jean-Marie’s work has always moved between those two worlds.
He studied electronics, pursued hi-fi, and spent decades working with architects and interior designers. His interests in sound, architecture and the objects we choose to live with became inseparable.
02 / The first experiments · 1970
Two drivers.
Old blankets.
A beginning.
Jean-Marie began learning electronics at university while visiting Paris hi-fi shows and specialist dealers. He encountered Joseph Léon of Elipson, Georges Cabasse and Jacques Mahul of Focal, among others.
He built a transistorised preamp, a kit valve amplifier and speakers using 17-centimetre SIARE drivers. The cabinets were filled with his mother’s old blankets. It is a delightfully unpolished first chapter for a designer who would spend decades refining the details.
“The materials were modest. The curiosity was not.”
03 / The object and the sound
Small in form.
Distinct in character.
The original SAT monitors arrived in the mid-1980s. At just 200 × 200 × 150 mm, they were meant to be both serious loudspeakers and objects people would want in their rooms. The idea found a following across France, Belgium, Germany and Scandinavia.
04 / A continuing idea
Not a straight line. A life’s work.
The original SAT
Microphase’s compact monitors establish the idea: musical ambition in an object that can live beautifully in a room.
The idea still has life
Jean-Marie revisits his decades-old Microphase speakers in a listening session described on his French Vintage HiFi blog.
Paris, again
Microphase Audio Design is revived, and SAT MK2 is introduced at the Paris Hi-Fi Show.
A new audience, a wider family
An Australian public debut in Melbourne is followed by further SAT and Tower designs, including SAT MK3.3 and Towers 3 and 4.
05 / Beyond the loudspeaker
The person behind the point of view.
- Design and architecture
- Nearly three decades working with architects and interior designers in Europe and Australasia.
- Technology and craft
- More than 40 years across electronics, loudspeakers, lighting, controls and home automation.
- Industry leadership
- Founding president of the European Chapter of CEDIA.
- Life beyond hi-fi
- A keen photographer and cook: another glimpse of a designer drawn to form, detail and experience.
A particular point of view
Uncommon by nature.
Worth hearing for yourself.
MAD’s speakers come from a specialty pursuit, rather than mass production.
Explore an audition