With profound sorrow, Audio Precision announces that, after a six-year battle with cancer, vice president of engineering Tom Kite has passed away.
During his 16-year career at Audio Precision, he applied his engineering expertise to a broad range of audio challenges, and was an essential contributor to the development and evolution of AP’s premier line of analyzers, the APx500 Series.
Dave Schmoldt, Audio Precision CEO, said, “Tom was passionate in his devotion to the advancement of audio measurement, to his AP colleagues, and to his family. For those reasons, as well as his great intellect and engineering acumen, his ability to teach, his passion for learning, his unshakeable optimism in the face of adversity, and for his humor and humanity, Tom was a loved and respected member of the Audio Precision team. He remains an inspiration to all of us and is dearly missed.”
Kite joined Audio Precision in February of 1999 as a DSP engineer and, by 2007, had been elevated to director of engineering.
Subsequently promoted to vice president of engineering in 2008, he oversaw all aspects of AP’s engineering efforts, maintaining his responsibilities as system architect, product planner, and DSP coder even while waging his courageous fight with cancer.
He was reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and was an established member of the Audio Engineering Society, where he was a major contributor in standards committees for audio test and measurement. He was similarly a noted contributor to the 10th edition of the National Association of Broadcasters Engineering Handbook.
Kite holds two patents for audio measurement technology, and has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals devoted to audio, acoustics, and image processing.
Prior to joining AP, Kite’s engineering experience included work at HP Laboratories and Xerox Laboratories. Not satisfied with a B.A. degree in Physics from Oxford University, he earned an M.S.E.E. (specializing in acoustics) and Ph.D. (specializing in image processing) from The University of Texas at Austin.
Contributions in Kite’s memory can be made to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance or The Founders Clinic.
Audio Precision
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance
The Founders Clinic