Incubus Guitarist Michael Einziger’s Startup Mixhalo Raises $10.7 Million for Better Live Event Audio

Mixhalo, the audio startup led by Incubus guitarist Michael Einziger, raised $10.7M in Series A funding from Foundry Group, Sapphire Sport, Founders Fund, and others. The company uses earbuds and mobile phones to deliver crystal-clear, real-time audio at concerts and live events.

San Francisco-based audio startup Mixhalo has raised a $10.7 million Series A round of funding as it sets out to use earbuds and mobile phones to improve the audio experience at concerts and other live events. The funding round was led by Foundry Group, with participation from Sapphire Sport, Founders Fund, Defy Partners, Cowboy Ventures, Red Light Management, Another Planet Entertainment, Rick Farman and Rich Goodstone of Superfly, and Charlie Walker of C3. Mixhalo is the brainchild of Michael Einziger, who is better known as the guitarist, co-founder and songwriter of Incubus. Einziger has been using headphones on stage for decades to better monitor his band’s sound during challenging live venue conditions, explained Mixhalo CEO Marc Ruxin in an interview with Variety this week. At one point, he had an epiphany, asking himself: “Wouldn’t it be cool to give what I hear to my fans, using phones?” Just like musicians on stage, concert attendees often struggle with subpar audio conditions. Maybe they’re too far back to hear well. Maybe there’s some other interference. Or maybe the audio is just too damn loud for their taste — and their cheap earplugs filter out all the high frequencies. Einziger’s idea was to take that pristine master audio signal, and send it straight to the phones of concert attendees. He got lots of encouragement for the idea both from tech industry insiders and musicians, and ended up talking to folks from the network vendor Meraki about a path forward. One of the main challenges was Wifi networking. “At a big event, it always sucks,” said Ruxin. Mixhalo ended up hiring a number of Meraki staffers to build its underlying technology, which replaces traditional Wifi with custom-build broadcast / multicast networking, and also accounts for the position of a user in the space to make sure that the delay of the main audio corresponds with what they’re hearing over their headphones. All of this is designed to work with regular phones, and the cheap head

By Madelyn Rutter at TechNexus Venture Collaborative