James M. Fosgate (December 5, 1937 – December 7, 2022) was an American inventor, engineer and businessman. The self-taught son of a television and radio repairman, Fosgate invented the first car amplifier in 1973 and founded Fosgate Electronics, now called Rockford Fosgate. After his departure from Rockford Fosgate in 1981, Fosgate remained active in the audio world, running Fosgate Laboratories and leading the team that created

Dolby Pro Logic II Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround. The terms Dolby Stereo and LtRt (''Left Total'', ''Right Total'') are also used to describe s ...

. Fosgate was also the developer of one of the finest

quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic, also called quadrasonic or by the neologism quadio ortmanteau, formed by analogy with "stereo" sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are po ...

decoders, the TATE II 101A (see

Stereo Quadraphonic SQ Quadraphonic ("Stereo Quadraphonic") was a Matrix decoder, matrix 4-channel quadraphonic sound system for Vinyl record, vinyl LP records. It was introduced by Columbia Records, CBS Records (known in the United States and Canada as Columbia Rec ...

for details), in collaboration with

Peter Scheiber Peter Scheiber was a classically trained musician and audio engineer. He was considered to be the originator of multichannel ''matrix'' audio formats, a mathematical formula used to convert four audio channels into two and back again. Scheiber ...

and Martin Willcocks, which was superseded by his 3601 decoder.

Audio career

Collaborating with four channel matrix pioneer Peter Scheiber early on gave Fosgate's company the edge to become one of the leaders in the Dolby Surround market. In 2003 Fosgate received an Emmy Award for the development of surround sound for television.''

Stereophile ''Stereophile'' is a monthly American audiophile magazine which reviews high-end audio equipment, such as loudspeakers and amplifiers, and audio-related news. History ''Stereophile'' was founded in 1962 by J. Gordon Holt. With the August 1 ...

'', Jan 2, 2005
INTERVIEWS, Jim Fosgate: Of (Surround) Sound Mind - Steve Guttenberg
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fosgate, Jim 1937 births 2022 deaths Businesspeople from Indianapolis 20th-century American inventors American audio engineers