Chris Vernon, Founder & CEO

Chris founded the company in 2004 to bring next generation audio technology to the entertainment industries. Originally a session musician and recording engineer, Chris was also an award winning audio technology lecturer, and head of technology on Sir George Martin’s national music course. He is an inventor with several international patents to his credit. Chris currently serves as CEO at Sontia and is an active member of AES and SMPTE as well as taking active roles in several other industry bodies. Chris founded Sontia with the credo that pure and natural sound quality is fundamentally important to any entertainment experience.

Mark Bernstein, Chairman

Mark joined Sontia as non-executive Chairman in January 2009. Originally qualified as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young in 1984, and has since then worked in the high tech sector in Europe, the US and Japan. He currently chairs a number of fast-growth companies (some VC-backed), and is a non-executive Director of Moss Bros Group plc - listed on the London Stock Exchange. During his career Mark has floated five companies, raised over £150m, and undertaken over 20 acquisitions and disposals, including the sale of another patented audio technology business, Soundtouch Ltd, in 2005. Amongst the strategic partners who have previously made investments in Mark’s companies are IBM, Motorola, BT, BskyB, Dixons, and Daily Mail.

Jon Green, Technical Development Manager

Jon started his career as a graduate hardware engineer with Philips Semiconductors in the Systems and Applications group for Digital Media. His experience ranges across both the Home and Car product divisions. Jon was a member of the architectural steering team for new IC products and customer champion for Automotive. Leaving Philips Semiconductors in 2004 he joined International Audio Group, designing products for the QUAD and Audiolab Hi-Fi brands to become their head of R&D and chief electronics engineer. Leading a UK based design team (hardware, software, test & measurement, mechanical) with manufacturing in China. For the last 4 years Jon has been technical lead at Cyrus Audio Ltd., who design and manufacture award winning high-fidelity audio products in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Jon has a strong customer focus with considerable manufacturing experience and technical expertise in digital audio.

John Plumtree, Business Development Manager

John has been working in the commercial sector for thirty + years; initially as a business agent for a number of companies in the Mechanical Engineering markets; selling and project managing, multi million pound installations to the likes of Rover Cars and Cosworth Engineering. He then moved into private consultancy with a particular interest in start ups; seeing them through from product launch to VC and second tier investment. He pays particular attention to the commercial development of companies and his practical experience enables him to adopt a hands on approach, to enable companies to develop sales pipelines and has travelled throughout the world to establish agencies and supplier / sales networks.

Dr Jun Tan, Managing Director, Asia Pacific Region

Based in Shanghai, Dr Tan represents Sontia in the Great China and Korea markets. Prior to his joining Sontia, Dr Tan was the founder president of ARM Holdings China. IN 2001, he pioneered ARM’s intellectual property licencing business development in China, and during the last decade has built up the Chinese operations into one of ARM’s largest markets. ARM is one of the world’s largest chip design licensors and its technology is found in many consumer electronic products, including the iPhone.

Before joining ARM, Jun worked as a senior research scientist in the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford.

Tatsuya Eguchi, Japan Regional Manager

Tatsuya Eguchi has a diverse background in the High-Tech industry, working with multi-national companies for well over 20 years. He has in-depth knowledge of semi-conductor and specific Hi-End Technology areas, and world-class experience in sales and IP licensing to a wide variety of global companies. Previous to Sontia, Eguchi-san was head of sales in Japan for ARM(UK). Further experience includes sales development and marketing roles; managing and leading teams with Tensilica (U.S.A.), Dia Semicon Systems ( A company of Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan) and DHL (Japan).

Kwanghee Lee, Korea Regional Manager

Kwanghee has more than 20 years’ experience within a number of multi-national companies and has a good technical background within high growth technology markets. He has successfully established organisations in Asia and has considerable experience in driving sales growth and the marketing of Intellectual Property businesses. He has experience in chip design as a front-end engineer and acted as consultant to European companies to launch a new business model, product (32bit RISC Core, EDA Tools). He held roles as FAE and also within sales and marketing at ARM and was a chip design engineer in Samsung Electronics Company. He brings with him a wealth of technical and commercial knowledge and is charged with the responsibility of developing Sontia in Korea.

Chris Ashton, Finance Director

Chris is a KPMG trained Chartered Accountant with a wide range of experience in both finance and business management. During the 1990s he was Group Accountant at Wahlco Engineered Products Group Limited, the European subsidiary of the US engineering group Wahlco Environmental Systems Inc, and has since held a number of senior finance roles in companies involved in pensions, the arts and business process outsourcing.

Dr Hermann Hauser 

Hermann co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners in 1997. In his long and successful history as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, he has founded or co-founded companies in a wide range of technology sectors.

Hermann holds an MA in Physics from Vienna University and a PhD in Physics from the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Hermann holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bath, Loughborough and from Anglia Polytechnic, and was awarded an Honorary CBE for ‘innovative service to the UK enterprise sector’ in 2001. In 2004, he was made a member of the Government’s Council for Science & Technology

Hermann Hauser commented:

"Chris Vernon has developed an innovative approach which appears to solve many of the problems traditionally associated with digital sound processing. I look forwards to advising Chris, Mark and their team."

Sir Robin Saxby 

Sir Robin Saxby, ex-Chairman of ARM, the world-leading silicon IP licensing company, whose partners shipped more than 4 billion chips in 2008, read electronics at Liverpool University and is an Hon FIET and FREng. He joined Rank Bush Murphy to design chips for TV receivers as his first job and after spells with ES2, Motorola and Henderson Security Systems, was headhunted to co-found ARM in early 1991 as a joint venture by Apple, Acorn and VLSI. He was its CEO until 2001. He has also served on the Open Microprocessor Initiative Advisory Group. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool and has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Liverpool, Loughborough and Essex. He holds the Faraday Medal of the IET where he is a member of council and served as a trustee and past President.

Sir Robin commented:

"Sontia has developed some exciting solutions. I am looking forwards to assisting Chris Vernon and Mark as best I can to realize some of the ambitions I held when we created ARM."

Michael Price 

Michael has quickly become one of the UK’s most sought after composers and music/sound editors for film. So far he has worked on more than 30 major studio pictures. He has been nominated for numerous awards in the industry and won a Golden Reel award for his work as lead music editor on Peter Jackson’s trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”. He is equally at ease writing in full orchestral or more electronic and contemporary idioms, and is greatly in demand as a producer, arranger and programmer. Michael’s career highlights include producing the score for “Band of Brothers” for Spielberg and his work on the latest Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace”.

Michael Price commented:

"Chris’ work at Sontia is the most natural presentation that I’ve ever heard. Sounds that are really coming from the front but definitely sound as if they’re behind you, and they don’t sound processed, even though they are. The results speak for themselves, everything I’ve heard that Sontia has done works beautifully."

David Glick 

David is one of the UK’s most successful media and entertainment lawyers and financiers. David specialises in commercial media and entertainment advice and investment with a particular emphasis on music, television, film, sport, theatre and fashion. In 2004 David founded Edge Group – which includes Michael Eaton, Harvey Goldsmith, DJ Pete Tong, and Frank Presland. Edge Group is now one of the UK’s leading entertainment and media specialist investment and advisory boutiques, and is the UK’s biggest specialist investment fund for live music and events.

David Glick commented:

"From small cheap and tinny speakers to beautiful multi-thousand pound systems, Sontia still makes that difference. Sontia sound is just a whole lot better than non-Sontia sound."