Duncan Shrimpton
Duncan has been working with High-End Audio Electronics for nearly 20 years. Always interested in engineering and science, Duncan’s design brief could be seen from an early age. Whether it was soap box racers or a guitar head amplifier, Duncan was never far away from his father's workshop and tools. His first “real” musical memory came from to listening to Gustav Holst “The Planet Suite” in the dark in front of the fire around the age of six. He was instantly captivated by the power and emotion that could be conveyed by music and by the vivid visual imagery created by his mind to recreate the orchestra that he could not see.
Duncan's interest in Electronics flourished under the mentoring guidance of a slightly “mad scientist” like neighbour, and as soon as he was legally allowed to work Duncan immediately took on two electronics jobs to support his engineering & mathematics studies. After completing joint honours degrees in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Duncan took up the post of Design Manager at Chord Electronics. It was during this time that he first met the co-owner of Chapter, Mike Gregory. Duncan always felt that he was forced to “design with one hand tied behind his back” in this position as he was never allowed to work on the power amplifier core issues” whilst at Chord. Duncan recalls that “We had borrowed a Krell KSA50 power amplifier and were doing some listening against the Chord SPM1200C power amplifier. The Krell absolutely blew the Chord away. A 50W Class-A design from yesteryear was making the Chord look like Barry Maguigan to its Lennox Lewis! We confronted the owner of Chord about this and we were rejected out of hand. He simply didn't want to know. Although it was later that it actually happened, in my mind that is the day that my heart left Chord and decided to setup my own hi-fi company. I knew that I could do so much better”.
Duncan worked as an applications engineer with power supply experts Linear Technology working on reference designs with some of the largest electronics companies in the world; Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, BT to name but a few and it was during this time he was able to hone is skills in high voltage and high frequency switching techniques. He came on board full time with Chapter Electronics Ltd as Technical Director in January 2004 and has subsequently been responsible for all of Chapters technical achievements.
Duncan is married with three children although his wife believes that he is also married to his iPad which he uses to drive his UPnP based home system. Duncan would describe himself as an engineer to the last. He is a rationalist who uses Occam's Razor to solve some of the greatest mysteries of the high end audio world. “I am a great fan of science fiction time travel. The inward mental spiral that effect need not necessarily follow cause is not too dissimilar to the basics of control loop theory in electronics, and each is equally maddening to comprehend!” Duncan is a Manchester United supporter.