“TICKEN” springs from a German word,“Tick- Tock”.

CEO of TICKEN SOUND Lab. is a German car fanatic who had spent long portion of his life in Luxury brand industry. Thanks to his frequent business trips to Europe, he had opportunities to experience and witness variety of cars; but, best of all, he had abundant chances to visit the automobile mecca “German Autobahn”.

He is also an audio connoisseur. He once spent two hours by train to London just to listen the large brick like vintage speakers from brand L of UK. He wanted to find if the speaker really improved by upgrading the original speaker units as much as his British friend told him.

He is always in search for good sound even if this meant that he will have to go a long way around. Little did he know then, this became the milestone of TICKEN SOUND LAB.
Of course, he is still very satisfied with the speakers he bought from London.

BMW is a favorite car brand for him, brand known for its freshness and efficiency. Though he dearly loved all the quality aspects of BMW, he always had a question on why BMW’s audio sound could never live up to its brand name, no matter the trim or options he applied. He later found out that he wasn’t alone in this complain.

Though he wasn’t so successful, he actually took it upon himself in trying to fix this problem more than 20 years ago by replacing the horrible speaker unit of his BMW X5 (E70) to the speaker that was suggested at an inch-up alloy wheel shop.

The failure must have been from the ignorance of the each driver’s job for frequency and importance of matching. When he decided to purchase, the shop emphasized that the size of magnet is larger than OEM. It seemed to make sense then, but it was later found that the size of the magnet is not only a factor to make difference to the sound quality.

Standing at the consumer point of view at the time, he did disappointed from the sound similar to OEM even after the replacement, but managed to whisk it away.
He later changed his car instead.

With time, he had forgotten about such episode and drove around in his Korean made company car, but his urge in fixing this problem started again after listening to unbearable sound quality of his new X6.

Conclusively, the solution to this could not be found in conventional car audio market.

To find a solution, he gathered information by visiting global enthusiasts’ forums, car audio stores, and clubs. During this process, he quickly realized that market had changed tremendously; there were so many brands that he did not recognize. Until then, he was under the belief that he was familiar to brand names, but this was a whole new environment than he had known.

While he was calming himself down, he was faced with jaw-dropping situation that exceeds strange feeling.

A Japanese speaker driver brand that he had never heard of was being treated as a “luxury brand” and was being sold for more tens of millions of won. He couldn’t help, but to scream “for a Japanese units?!”, and soon became curios of the reason for such a price. The fact that he never cared for Japanese units only added to his curiosity. He had to hear its sound. As a person who prides himself for spending great portion of his life in search for quality sound, the sound of the Japanese speaker couldn’t have been duller. He was under a full understanding that impression from sound is subjective and abstract, but he still could not be convinced by the price rate that followed the sound quality.
Frankly, more shocking to him was the fact that so called “specialists” of the car audio dealers were justifying this brand to consumers.
It seemed as though anyone who can nicely gift wraps their car experience through blogging can become the best car audio expert.

The conclusion derived from this was that local car audio market has been badly distorted. He then remembered that the watch industry he worked for in the past, used to be in the same situation. Back then, the watch market in Korea sold jewelry brand R, T, and C as top watch brand while actual top brand A wasn’t being introduced; the market was uneducated, distorted, and spaced from the global market situation.

He couldn’t yield to this.
If the market could not provide a satisfying solution, he figured he could find the perfect combination himself. Afterward, he started testing all products including other brand’s BMW custom products and known HIFI brand’s products, but could not find the sound that satisfied his ears. This unyielding desire and disappointment left the sense of responsibility to act toward the solution.

He had experience in changing the market direction, loved German watch, BMW, and quality sound; this was a perfect field for him.

A soon as the decision was made, he dug into developing.
The trial and error experience he had with the speaker of X5 and success he experienced in upgrading the sound by replacing the Mid- Unit and Tweeter was a great help.

Unyielding development direction and principle had already been decided.

1) Not Car audio but HIFI Approach.
: Never yield to the most important virtue, sound quality.
2) Complete consumer oriented approach.
: Develop product that I will purchase and agree as a consumer.
3) Do not disturb the OEM interior and equipment.
: Maintain pre-existing interior.
4) Collaborate with brands that are acknowledged by their craftsmanship by HIFI connoisseur.
: Produce quality sound satisfy the consumers.

Matching is the most important factor in audio.
If the matching is not properly done, the audio devices’ sound of that cost tens of millions of dollar could make worse than the much low-cost audio system.
We focus on optimizing the sound of original audio through perfect matching.


As our path had been decided, finding a partner well recognized in the industry who could share our mission became important. During discussion of variety of conditions and developmental directions we were able to come to mutual understanding with firms in Norway, Germany, and America. We collaborated with all options and open opportunities and pour our full effort in development.

Amongst others, SEAS from Norway was able to partner us for the longest period and fully share our passion and value. Their value toward “craftsmanship”, “commitment to their words”, and “attitude toward audio system” deeply inspired us. This had been the perfect and trustworthy approach for us especially for the CEO who was in luxury industry.
Furthermore, we were able to re-confirm why reputedly known speakers took SEAS drivers through endlessly listening to their products. (Amongst other countless examples, must have item bookshelves speakers Mani2 from Totem in Canada uses SEAS’s unit.) After all, our job is to gather the best technology products to customize our own units that could create best sound tuning.

We pride that we have accomplished our goal.

Through all this, one could ask a question, “If their unit is so trust worthy, why develop a new one and complicate things?” The answer to this question is simple; drivers produced for general purposes could not meet our requirement. Our partners’ work ethics and craftsmanship was able to fulfill our picky standard and created a perfectly customized product; they further settled to produce it exclusively for us.

Of course, this did not come easily, endless discussion and persuasion was required. Majority of the products offered by TICKEN SOUND LAB SOLUTION had been customized through endless development and does not exist in the conventional markets.

Seemingly endless days and trials had been passed to find the solution that could fully sound the BMW with quality.
I feel apologetic toward my car now tattered from countless replacement of units and our staffs who had to carry out these replacements.
Thus, we have gotten one certain fact out of all this; BMW is a car that’s ready with magnificent sound-box and that effort will always bare you a fruit.
“TICKEN SOUND LAB”is the fruit of our passion and experiences.

Goal of TICKEN SOUND LAB is anything but small.

Our MISSION STATEMENT is as followed.

“Let’s create a world class AUDIO SOLUTION LAB that will beat the “H” merged recently by Samsung, and meet the audio connoisseurs from all over the world.”
We imagine cars with TICKEN SOUND LAB BRAND logo on the highways around the world with a pride for them as the best AUDIO SOLUTION.

We are working to develop the solution for German cars other than BMW.

The writing led on longer than expected, but I feel confident that you are now a TICEKN SOUND LAB enthusiast.

We hope for our experience and effort will act as tremendous contribution to our client’s satisfaction and market development.

Until the day TICKEN SOUND LAB becomes a global acoustic lab through everlasting research and effort, please continue to support us.


KARIS & Co.,Inc.
Representative Director
Howard Choi
TICKEN SOUND Lab.