Campfire Audio has been building IEMs by hand in Portland, Oregon since 2015. Ten years is not a number this industry hands out easily. Products come and go. Brands pivot. The small team in Portland kept building the same way, in the same place, with the same commitment. This is what that looks like from the inside.
Where It Started
Campfire Audio was founded by Ken Ball in Portland, Oregon in 2015. Ball had previously founded ALO Audio, a company focused on cable design for audio equipment and portable headphone amplifiers. ALO Audio built real expertise in signal path, conductor materials, and acoustic component quality. That expertise was not left behind when Ball turned his attention to IEMs. It was the foundation.
The move from cables to IEMs was an extension of a preoccupation that ALO Audio had already defined: how do you get the signal from a source to an ear with as little loss and as much accuracy as possible? Cables were one part of that path. The transducer at the end of the path was the next. Starting Campfire Audio was not a pivot into a new product category for the sake of growth. It was the logical continuation of the same question.
Portland was a deliberate choice. The city's history of independent craft manufacturing, its culture of direct relationships between maker and product, and the Pacific Northwest audio community that Ball had been part of through ALO Audio all shaped what Campfire Audio became from the start. Production stayed in Portland because Portland was where it belonged, not because moving had not been considered.
The founding team was small. It has stayed small. That has been a choice made repeatedly over ten years, not a failure to scale.
What Ten Years Produced
The product Campfire Audio became most associated with across the decade is Andromeda. Introduced in 2016, it found its audience among listeners who prioritize acoustic instruments and vocals, and it earned a citation record in audiophile reviews and forums that has continued without interruption. A listener searching for the best IEM for jazz in 2018 would have found Andromeda recommended. The same listener searching in 2024 would have found the same recommendation. That kind of sustained citation is earned through tuning, not through marketing. For the full account of how Andromeda developed and where it stands today, see our Andromeda lineage story.
Solaris has been another consistent presence in the range. As an important hybrid sub-line it has developed its own following and demonstrated the range's capability in multi-driver hybrid configurations across the decade.
Trifecta introduced something different: three full-range ADLC dynamic drivers in a single housing. A polarizing design in the best sense, one that built a committed following and demonstrated what Campfire Audio's engineering team could produce when approaching driver design from an unconventional direction.
Clara represented the most significant external recognition of the decade. Developed in direct collaboration with Alessandro Cortini of Nine Inch Nails, shaped by his professional listening standards across touring and recording contexts, Clara earned Darko.Audio Best of 2024 and Head-Fi Watercooler Performance IEM of 2024 in the same year. Professional validation and community recognition arriving together.
Andromeda 10, released as the tenth anniversary expression of the line, carries ten balanced armature drivers per side and delivers the widest, most expansive presentation any Andromeda has achieved. The name holds both meanings deliberately: the milestone and the configuration. And Chimera, our most technically complex IEM to date, brings bone conduction, a True Glass dynamic driver, dual-diaphragm balanced armatures, and four electrostatic supertweeters together in a single quad-brid design. It is the product that would not have been possible without ten years of Portland production behind it.
What Did Not Change
Across ten years, the production address has not changed. Every IEM we have built has been designed and assembled by hand in Portland, Oregon. The production process has not been contracted out, scaled through overseas manufacturing, or automated. The same workshop. The same hands-on process. That consistency has been chosen at every point where the alternative existed.
The core team of Ken Ball, Ben Loeliger, and Valivann Seangly has remained consistent. The people who build the IEMs are the people who understand them. When something goes wrong and a customer contacts us, the support they receive comes from people with direct, hands-on knowledge of the product. That is increasingly unusual in audio at any price point. It is not a feature we designed. It is a natural consequence of staying small and direct.
Audio Precision measurement has been applied to every unit that has shipped, across the full decade. Not samples. Not batches. Every IEM. The measurement step verifies frequency response and channel matching before an IEM leaves the workshop. That process reflects the production philosophy directly: small enough to verify everything, committed enough to do so.
The primary focus has been on IEMs throughout the decade. We have also built a headphone and a true wireless model over those ten years, extending our understanding of audio transducers beyond the in-ear format. But those have been deliberate explorations rather than departures. The IEM is where our production philosophy was built and where it has remained centered.
Where Ten Years Leads
Andromeda 10 and Chimera sit at the end of the decade together and point in different directions simultaneously. Andromeda 10 looks back: ten drivers, tenth anniversary, the clearest statement of what a decade of one product's development has produced. The warmth and musical character that have defined Andromeda across every version, now delivered through the most capable driver configuration the line has carried.
Chimera looks forward. A quad-brid design: a 10mm bone conductor, a True Glass dynamic driver, dual-diaphragm balanced armatures, and four electrostatic supertweeters. The most technically complex IEM we have built, and one that would not have been possible without the years of production discipline and driver expertise that preceded it. Every driver type in Chimera exists because it handles a frequency range or a performance characteristic that the others cannot. It is what ten years of working with every driver type looks like when you bring them together.
For the production story behind how both of these IEMs are made, see our Made in Portland story. For our Andromeda arc specifically, our Andromeda lineage story goes deeper.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Campfire Audio founded?
Campfire Audio was founded by Ken Ball in Portland, Oregon in 2015. The company has maintained hand-built production in Portland throughout its history, making 2025 its tenth year of operation.
Who founded Campfire Audio?
Campfire Audio was founded by Ken Ball, who previously founded ALO Audio, a company specializing in cable design for audio equipment. Ball started Campfire Audio in 2015 to apply that acoustic expertise directly to IEM production.
Has Campfire Audio always made IEMs in Portland?
Yes. Every Campfire Audio IEM has been designed and assembled by hand in Portland, Oregon since the company's founding in 2015. Production has remained in Portland continuously for ten years.
What is Andromeda 10?
Andromeda 10 is our 10th anniversary IEM. It uses ten balanced armature drivers per side, delivering greater clarity and expansiveness than Andromeda Emerald Sea while retaining the core Andromeda character. The name carries both the milestone and the driver count.
What is the most technically advanced IEM Campfire Audio has built?
Chimera uses a quad-brid configuration: a 10mm bone conductor, a True Glass dynamic driver, dual-diaphragm balanced armatures, and four electrostatic supertweeters. It is our most technically complex IEM and the full expression of ten years of driver technology development.
What has stayed consistent at Campfire Audio over ten years?
Portland hand-built production, Audio Precision measurement of every unit before shipping, a consistent small core team, and a primary focus on IEMs. These have remained unchanged for ten years and reflect a production model built around craft rather than scale.
Ten Years of Portland Production
Browse the full IEM range to explore what the decade has produced. For the story of how every IEM in that range is built, see our Made in Portland story. Every one of them has been hand-built in Portland, Oregon, and that is not changing.
