TIMELINE
OA21 / ONIX HISTORY TIMELINE
Onix Audio began with a salesman and two engineers who were just 21 Years old ( Hence OA21 ) Onix started from two rooms above a shoe shop in Brighton Sussex. ONIX AUDIO made amplifiers by hand, and every single one was listened too when complete before despatch. All were built by the people that designed them. They loved life, music and they loved what they did, each one of them lived and existed for the pursuit of perfection in sound and quality. A few beers and plenty of women just put icing on the cake . Sound ruled their lives.
1986 >
By 1986 the company and the brand was 100% owned by only one of the founders. In 1991 to progress his personal life he sold the company but kept the name/brand ONIX . The job was done the company was built. New owners had different ideas and it seemed the right thing to do. The ere was changing, ONIX was now a brand not just a company . Our founder retained & owned the brand ONIX so under an aggreement the company he built was allowed to use it . He still owned the name ONIX all seemed set it would carry on .
1995 >
Used by the Chinese company the Brand did little to make an impact , their products had none of the orginal qualities and followed none of the ONIX path set by the founders. The ONIX brand ethics had been lost along the way to became an OEM brand like so many since then . It was not British or a true audiophile product when made by the Chinese company.
2010 >
In January 2020 the world was hit by Covid 19 , no one saw it coming and no one knew how it would change the world and people living through it . In 2020 The founder of ONIX chose to sell the brand ONIX to the same Chinese Company that used it in 1995-2010 timeline . He did this as peace offering for past brand confusion in Asia and Europe. He created ONIX - the job was done , the brand will always be his creation .
< 1984
Inventing the classic half size amplifier called the ONIX OA21 was launched in 1984 eventually selling thousands in just 7 short years. They were so British and loved by everyone, with 50 watts of pure RMS power. and only three knobs .ONIX sold them via dealers and distributors worldwide finally into 28 countires including Japan and most of Australasia . The years passed and ONIX boys grew up, they changed as did the era they helped create.
< 1991
The world of music changed when MP3 arrived, MP3 a compressed format that has less than 20% of the original sonic content, this drastic reduction of quality took hold with the consumer embracing it in pursuit of conveinece . ONIX had to find a new direction quality was being forgotton. The then owners stripped the assets and sold the brand that they didnt really own being the property of the founder . The brand passed to the Chinese illegally & unknown to them by someone that had no right to sell it . They were unaware of this.
< 2009
After the brand and its DNA had been virtually forgotten, Onix returned to it`s core values with the original owner who is a pure sound perfectionist. A new range of products was desinged by him and launched by Onix in 2014. ONIX HIFI was remembered and loved by thousands. Particularly the original classic ONIX OA21. People had changed understanding of what it takes to create quality. Sound quality had made way to demands of features, forgetting that great HI-FI must give priority to sound not features. Vinyl records and CDs have virtually disappeared in 2010 , and downloads of music were ruling the way forward. It was the right time to come back and enjoy sound again. ONIX was relaunched with vision and dedication fotgotton by the original founder . Onix Audio was back