About Essence

Thanks for visiting Bob Rapoport’s About Essence For Hi-Res Audio page.
We design and sell our own award-winning Essence HDMI DACs and are a dealer for some of the world’s most respected audio brands — Acoustic Energy Speakers (UK), Amphion Speakers (Finland), FIBBR Ultra Pro 4K HDMI Fiber Optic Cables, and ATI Power Amps (USA, founded by SAE’s Morris Kessler).

Eliminating traditional dealer overhead lets us deliver state-of-the-art performance and real-world value.
Nobody knows more about the products we sell — or how to make vintage and modern systems perform at their best — than we do.

A Lifetime in High Fidelity

Growing up in North Hollywood during the Golden Age of Hollywood, I was surrounded by the world’s finest movie theaters — Grauman’s Chinese, The Pantages, The Egyptian, The Paramount, and the Cinerama Dome. Those massive screens and powerful sound systems defined my idea of what great sound should be: dynamic, wide-band, and emotionally immersive.

Home systems couldn’t match that magic back then, but the dream of achieving it at home became my lifelong pursuit. I caught the hi-fi bug at age eight and was lucky enough to grow up with legendary speakers like the Triple KLH Nine electrostatics. By the early ’70s, open-reel master tapes of the L.A. Philharmonic revealed just how real music reproduction could be, offering much higher dynamic range than commercial vinyl albums.

On the Cutting Edge Since the Beginning

After college, I launched a career in audio sales and marketing that’s spanned over 50 years.
Starting as a sales rep with Bang & Olufsen and Sennheiser, then Bose, Stanton/Pickering, Phase Linear, and Discwasher, I eventually founded my own rep firm in 1974, representing pioneering brands such as SAE, Design Acoustics, Micro-Acoustics, Boston Acoustics, ESS, and Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab.

Over the decades, I’ve helped introduce some of the most important innovations in audio history:

  • The first line of high-end solid-state power amps by SAE

  • The Heil Air Motion Transformer Speakers by ESS

  • The Audio Pulse Time Delay, the world’s first digital surround processor

  • The original Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab audiophile LPs

  • The Millennium 3.2.1, the world’s first dts add-on decoder for Laserdisc and 5.1 DVD-Audio discs

  • My patented design for Final’s modular electrostatic speakers, named Best New Speaker of 2002 at CES

  • In 2004, I was a member of the team that introduced HDMI in the U.S. for high-resolution digital audio and video

Leading the Way Today

Today, Essence continues that tradition of innovation.
Our HDACC II-4K HDMI DAC Preamp / Headphone Amp and Evolve II-4K Multi-Channel DAC bring true 32-bit / 384 kHz hi-res audio to any vintage or modern system. Together with ATI, Acoustic Energy, Amphion, and HDMI Fiber Optic Cables by FIBBR, we offer a complete signal path from source to loudspeaker — engineered for the highest fidelity possible in the home.  Discover more about HDMI technology at HDMI.org.

The Essence of Who We Are

After more than five decades in this business, I still wake up every day excited about the music and the technology that makes it come alive. My personal code is simple: be kind, be generous, and keep learning.

I believe in staying young at heart, embracing innovations like AI, and helping others get the very best experience from their systems. High fidelity isn’t just about gear — it’s about connection, emotion, and joy.

That’s the spirit behind everything we do at Essence.

Essence For Hi-Res Audio — bridging vintage sound with today’s technology.