The Saint-Henri soundsmith reclaiming how music should feel

If you’re going out in Montreal and felt like the music somehow feels different—fuller, warmer, maybe even emotional—that was likely Automatic Audio. Or more precisely, Denis Mospanov.

Mospanov is the kind of person who can talk about treble response and tortoiseshell horn linings with the same reverence other people reserve for natural wine or vintage synths. His business, Automatic Audio, builds custom speakers out of a private studio and workshop in Saint-Henri, where the wood grain matters as much as the wattage, and form always follows feeling.

The story of Automatic Audio is, at its core, about a kid who grew up crate-digging in suburban record shops, got ignored by the gatekeepers, and built his own sound system from the ground up: Not just for audiophiles, but for anyone who still believes music can change the atmosphere of a room.

A love letter to the midrange

The first speaker Denis Mospanov ever built was meant to play records the right way in his parents’ garage.

He’d been collecting and restoring vintage speakers for years—scouring the used market, flipping finds for friends, reviving old Klipsch gear. But as much as he loved the sound, he also knew the truth: old speakers are like old cars. Charming, yes. Reliable? Not always.

So he started taking them apart. Learning the language of driver specs, cabinet volume, horn geometry. And eventually, drawing up his own designs. “I just wanted to build the perfect speaker for myself,” he recalls.

That speaker became Barbara: A 130-pound three-way loudspeaker with a hand-crafted Le Cléac’h horn for crisp treble and triple passive radiators to move air like a subwoofer. It was also, in a way, a speaker designed for his mom.

Mospanov’s mother, a food lover and the best cook he knows, has hearing loss in specific frequencies and heightened sensitivity in others. “Restaurants were like a ticking time bomb,” he explains. “We’d go out and within minutes she’d be uncomfortable, overwhelmed by the sound.”

So when he designed Barbara, he built a speaker that could do what commercial systems rarely do—deliver clarity at low volumes, with a midrange that doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. 

“When she heard music through it for the first time,” he says, “she cried.”

Then when Mospanov’s partner Mackenzie heard Barbara for the first time, she helped him see that his work had the potential to become a business, one that could supply just as rich an experience to homes and public spaces alike.

From record stores to restaurants

Before Automatic Audio, Mospanov worked at La Rama, slinging wax by day and DJing parties by night. The sound systems they used at those events were old-school, built like tanks, and always needed coaxing. 

“We were breaking our backs moving those things around,” he laughs, “but they sounded way better than anything you could buy off the shelf today.”

At the same time, he was working in restaurants—first at Arthur’s, then at Osmo X Marusan. Long shifts on the line led him to think about acoustics and sound systems. So when he started Automatic Audio, he knew exactly who he was building for: places where music should be felt, not fought against. 

“It’s a familiar scene,” Denis says. “The place gets busy, people are yelling, the music gets turned up, and the speakers just distort.”

His first installations came through the back door—literally and figuratively. Friends from the food world gave him a shot. Sans Soleil. Pichai. Vino Disco. Whole systems were custom: amps, crossovers, cabinets. 

“It pushed us beyond what we’d done before,” he says. “But it also set the tone for everything after.”

The anti-audiophile audiophile

If high-end audio has a reputation, it’s this: exclusionary, expensive, and often kind of smug. Mospanov hates that. “Somewhere along the way, sound became a status symbol,” he says. “Not a shared experience.”

He traces the alienation back to the ’90s and 2000s, when hi-fi design became obsessed with perfectionism and price tags. “The speakers got smaller and sleeker, but the prices shot through the roof—and the sound quality didn’t match,” he says. “It became like high fashion. You’re paying to feel like you belong in a club.”

Automatic Audio isn’t chasing that. The speakers are big—sometimes aggressively so. They don’t try to disappear into the room. But they’re designed to let the music breathe.

Mospanov uses high-efficiency drivers and vented enclosures to maximize clarity at lower volumes. “You don’t need to crank them to get them to sing,” he says. And while his systems aren’t cheap, they’re built to last—not to be replaced.

“If it feels a bit gluttonous to add a subwoofer like the Melon,” he adds, “then good. We’re in the business of indulgence—but the kind that sticks with you.”

Built to be understood

For all the technical precision behind Automatic Audio’s systems, Mospanov is quick to downplay the mystique. “There’s this black-box effect around audio,” he says. “People assume they won’t understand it, so they don’t even ask.” But he’s not trying to gatekeep. He’s trying to make it easier.

Whether it’s an audiophile with a vintage tube amp or a restaurant owner who just wants to stream Spotify, Automatic’s approach is the same: ask questions, listen to the answers, and then design a speaker that makes sense for the space, the listener, and the kind of life happening around it.

Each model in the lineup—Barbara, Clover, Bean, Frida, Melon—is a starting point, not a one-size-fits-all solution. Need Bluetooth? No problem. Want a wall-mounted horn-loaded system that keeps conversation audible during a Friday night dinner rush? That’s Frida’s whole deal.

And if a space calls for something no existing model can solve? Mospanov hits the sketchpad. “Every room has its own acoustics, every vibe its own sonic fingerprint,” he says. “We’re not just selling speakers—we’re building relationships with sound.”

At the workshop

Automatic Audio’s current workshop sits at the end of a long hallway in a semi-mythical building in Saint-Henri. To outsiders, it might look like just another warehouse. To the people inside, it’s an interdependent creative ecosystem.

A ceramicist throws dishware for Joe Beef down the hall. A florist designs sculptural arrangements that belong in gallery spaces. And the woodworkers next door—some of whom doubted Mospanov in the months following him moving in—now knock back beers with him on Fridays, sharing their technical knowledge to keep pushing the craftsmanship forward.

It’s here that Automatic Audio’s latest speaker, a collaboration with the team behind the Verdun restaurant Beba, is taking shape. The design will incorporate ceramic elements and is tuned specifically for punk and rock playlists. “We brought the owners into the shop and played them a few tracks,” Mospanov says. “The look on their faces said everything.”

This cross-pollination—between disciplines, trades, tastes—is crucial. It’s how the speakers end up feeling like they belong to a place instead of being dropped into it.

The future sounds analogue

After building more than 50 speakers by hand, Mospanov is tired. Not of the work itself, but of trying to do it without a well-rounded team. “One day I sat down and wrote out everything I was doing, and I came up with 38 different jobs,” he says. “And that’s not sustainable.”

So this year, he’s expanding the team. A couple of woodworkers. A social media lead. Maybe more down the line. It’s a delicate balance—growing the company without sacrificing the soul of the project.

“I still want this to feel like your neighbourhood speaker shop,” he says. “We’re never going to be too big for someone to just walk in and ask questions.”

Automatic Audio is chasing presence, but not in the sense of clout; it's presence which fills a room at the right volume, the kind that makes you sit back and stop talking to really hear a song you’ve heard a hundred times before, and feel like it’s the first.