About KYDG

Keith Yates Design Group is a California-based design, engineering and testing service assisting movie and music lovers around the world improve the quality—the immersiveness—of their home entertainment experiences.

Beginnings
Founder and president Keith Yates began an audio/video career in 1972, working for several specialty retailers in Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. After managing a high-end audio salon in Carmel, California in the late 1970s, he launched Keith Yates AudioVideo in Sacramento in January 1981 and over the next 10 years built it into one of the nation's premier high-end A/V retail and custom installation operations. In 1991 he founded Keith Yates Design Group in Penryn, a small town in the nearby Sierra foothills, to focus on the interface between audio/video equipment and its acoustical environment. In 1998, the company expanded its design and production facilities into offices at the historic Auburn Promenade building at 853 Lincoln Way, Auburn, California.

Activities
The company designs comprehensive venues—principally home theaters, media rooms, precision listening rooms and concert/recital halls—for private clients worldwide. Yates is also active as an author, teacher, seminar leader, industry panelist and consultant on the topics of acoustics, psychoacoustics, loudspeaker design, and new multimodal (auditory/visual/haptic) strategies for achieving what Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief" or what Yates has termed DeepEntertainment(sm).

Recognition
Yates has been featured or profiled in journals as diverse as Rolling Stone, GQ, Archi-Tech, H.A. Pro, The Business Journal, MacWorld, MacWorld Japan, California Executive and This Week in Consumer Electronics (TWICE). He has also been the subject of a radio feature distributed worldwide by the Associated Press, and a segment on the Home and Garden cable television channel.

Publications
With over 120 feature articles published in such journals as AudioVideo Interiors, Stereophile, Archi-Tech, Audio, High Performance Review, Custom Builder, Audio Retailer and others, Keith Yates may be the most widely published designer of home theaters and media rooms in the English-speaking world. He completed a book, with coauthor Ralph Glasgal, entitled Ambiophonics: Beyond Surround Sound to Virtual Sonic Reality.

Professional
Yates graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with additional study at Yale University (1975), Indiana University at Bloomington (1976), and Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA, 1995). He is affiliated with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA). He is certified by Lucasfilm for THX design and by the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) for video calibration. He has participated in many specialized seminars and workshops on acoustical testing, the Techron TEF system, loudspeaker engineering, lighting design, AutoCAD, and related technical topics.

Performance-Based RoomDesign (sm)

Building your own dedicated A/V room?
Wondering how to get your room & A/V gear to work with each other?
Questions about Home Theater or Listening Room acoustic design?
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Copyright (c) 1998-2001 Keith Yates Design Group, Inc. All rights reserved.