PK Sound appoints Conrad Whelan as Chairman

PK Sound has appointed Conrad Whelan as Chairman. He has served on the company's board since 2018.

The move gives the Calgary-based professional audio company a more prominent leadership role for a technology executive best known as a founding engineer at Uber, where he wrote the dispatch algorithm central to the transport platform's early growth.

PK Sound makes robotic line array systems for the live sound market. Its customers include production companies, system integrators and touring engineers working in venues and live events.

Whelan's shift from board member to Chairman comes as PK Sound seeks broader adoption of its products across the professional audio sector. His background in emerging technology and infrastructure is expected to help shape the company's next stage of expansion.

After Uber, his career included work in decentralised computing and data infrastructure, experience that sits at the intersection of software, systems design and commercial deployment.

Industry shift

Whelan framed the appointment around changes in how live sound operators assess technology choices.

"The live sound industry is at an inflection point," said Conrad Whelan, Chairman, PK Sound. "The venues, the touring companies, the rental houses are being asked to make decisions about technology that will define how their businesses operate for the next decades. My ambition is to make sure PK Sound gives them the clearest possible reason to move forward with confidence. Better technology means better audience experiences and better business outcomes for us and our partners."

PK Sound focuses on line source systems that can be adjusted in real time to alter acoustic coverage. The approach allows engineers to control how sound is distributed in a venue without the manual changes often associated with conventional arrays.

That places the company in a specialised corner of the professional audio market, where manufacturers are trying to give sound engineers more flexible tools for complex spaces. Venues, rental firms and touring operators typically weigh reliability, ease of deployment and long-term return when selecting systems.

Whelan said the significance of PK Sound's technology lies in how it changes the design of a line array rather than making a small improvement to existing systems.

"What PK Sound has built is genuinely rare," said Whelan. "Patented robotic technology that gives engineers precise, real-time control over acoustic coverage is not an incremental improvement; it's a different way of thinking about what a line array can do. The opportunity now is making sure the right people understand that, and that we're building the kind of company that earns long-term trust across the industry."

Leadership focus

Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Bridge said Whelan had already influenced the business during his time on the board. His comments pointed to a leadership style centred on commercial discipline and customer needs as PK Sound looks to win a larger share of the market.

"Conrad has always asked the questions that make us dig deeper," said Jeremy Bridge, Chief Executive Officer, PK Sound. "His instinct is to cut through to what actually matters, for the business and for the people we serve. That's exactly the kind of leadership we need as we scale our patented technology in the market."

For PK Sound, the appointment also reflects a wider trend in specialist hardware businesses: bringing in senior leaders with software and platform backgrounds to help turn technical differentiation into repeatable commercial growth. In sectors where products are complex and sales cycles can be long, boards often look for executives with experience in market education as well as engineering judgement.

Professional audio remains a specialist field, but it is shaped by many of the same pressures seen elsewhere in technology. Customers want systems that can adapt to varied environments, reduce set-up constraints and remain useful over long operating lives. Manufacturers, in turn, need to show not only technical merit but also that they can support customers over time.

Founded in Calgary, Alberta, PK Sound has built its identity around robotic control in line source technology. With Whelan now taking the chair on an executive basis, the company is signalling that it sees leadership and market positioning as central to the next phase of its development.