Bob Stuart, founder of MQA and co-founder of Meridian Audio, has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Prince Philip Medal, the first audio engineer to receive the award in its 20-year history.
He was awarded the accolade for “his exceptional contribution to audio engineering which has changed the way we listen to music and experience films”.
Commissioned by HRH Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh KG KT, Senior Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Prince Philip Medal is awarded periodically to an engineer of any nationality who has made exceptional contributions to engineering through practice, management or education.
Accepting the award, Stuart said: “Audio engineering sits at an intersection between analogue and digital engineering, music and the human listener. My passion to enable great sound recording and playback has required a multi-disciplinary approach, but that quest to preserve and share music performances is very satisfying and important.
“I am honoured and humbled to receive this award from the Royal Academy of Engineering.”
Stuart studied electronic engineering and acoustics at the University of Birmingham and operations research at Imperial College, London. In 1972, he worked for Cambridgeshire start-up, Lecson Audio, where he met industrial designer Allen Boothroyd, who sadly died earlier this year.
The pair’s debut design, the Lecson AC1/AP1, won the Design Council Award, the first of a record three Design Council Awards for them.
In 1977, Stuart and Boothroyd co-founded Meridian Audio. Stuart served as CTO until early 2015. In 2014, he founded MQA Ltd, where he is currently chairman and CTO.
At Meridian Audio, Stuart pushed the boundaries of high-performance analogue and digital audio and video technologies. His deep interest in human auditory science drove a lifelong passion to improve the way we hear recorded music.
Along with his iconic work at Meridian Audio and MQA, Stuart is a lifelong student, researcher and teacher and has published several important papers on audio engineering. He is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society and has served on technical committees in the USA, Japan and UK.
The Prince Philip Medal is the latest award to recognise Stuart’s remarkable and continuing contributions to audio engineering.