ABOUT US

In the beginning

Viola Audio Laboratories was founded in 2000 as part of a quest. At its heart was a longtime collaboration between two leading designers, Paul Jayson and the late Tom Colangelo. Their commitment to reproducing sound while retaining the musical and emotional impact of the source defined their careers. Their vision is realized with industry leading components designed with sonic neutrality that defines Viola Audio Labs.

Paul and Tom began their careers at Mark Levinson Audio Systems (MLAS) in the 1970’s. Mark Levinson is widely credited with being the father of high-end audio and developing the market at a time when the US hi-fi business was on the wane at home and abroad. In Tom Colangelo, Mark saw a young audio enthusiast with a keen understanding of physics. In Paul Jayson, Mark saw a young enthusiastic engineer intent on reinventing audio reproduction.

Tom, as MLAS’s chief design engineer, and Paul, still in midst of his studies when tapped to join MLAS as an engineering assistant, pioneered a craftsman guild approach to construction and manufacturing. They located the best components, inspected every part, and applied the highest quality standards to create the best sound equipment possible. As a result they co-designed many of the legendary MLAS products that shaped the world of audio for the next three decades restoring the US to audio prominence.

In 1984 Mark Levinson left MLAS to form Cello producing fully integrated home audio systems with studio-quality components. Paul and Tom once again formed the core of the design team. It was during this period that Paul became Managing Engineer as Tom lead Research and Development.  New benchmarks continued to be set with development of the highly successful Audio Suite, Audio Palette, Performance Amps, and Strings. The Stradivarius speaker line completed an integrated system that quickly became a timeless classic. Paul and Tom followed one success with another when they designed the award-winning Encore line of components and a succession of speakers that shaped the 1980’s and early 1990’s.

Cello’s untimely expansion of its highest-end operations in the late 1990’s met an economy going in the opposite direction. When Cello ceased operations in 2000, Paul Jayson and Tom Colangelo saw an open window thru which to continue their quest for sonic neutrality furthering their unique vision.

As the principal design team at MLAS and Cello, Paul and Tom introduced many products that achieved legendary status among audiophiles. Among them are the ML-2 Amplifier and ML-7 Preamplifier from MLAS; the game-changing Audio Palette, Audio Suite, and Performance II amplifiers from Cello. Very few individuals have achieved this level of contribution to the audiophile community.   But as the Viola Symphony Amplifier and Viola Cadenza Preamplifier would prove, high end audio reproduction was about to realize new altitudes that only these two men had vision to see.