Supervising the Sound

Oscar-Nominated Andrew DeCristofaro Shares His Journey from Audiophile to Sound Editor for Unbroken, Green Book, Spirited, and More.

- Jeremy Glowacki

Andrew DeCristofaro has been an audiophile for most of his life. From the age of 12 on through his childhood he and his dad would spend weekends driving from Hi-Fi shop to Hi-Fi shop in Los Angeles auditioning loudspeakers. When it recently came time to renovate his childhood home in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, creating a proper system for watching movies and listening to music, there would be no compromising on audio quality.

The thing is, DeCristofaro is not your “average audiophile” (if there was such a thing). He also happens to be an Oscar-nominated supervising sound editor with years and years of experience weaving together the audio “fabric” of famous movies that are played on systems like the one he was trying to assemble for his renovated home. In other words, he is an audiophile who also understands, intimately, how certain movies were designed to sound.

Knowing all of this, DeCristofaro’s local AV dealer (The Source AV) suggested he audition speakers from a manufacturer called Wisdom Audio. After doing some online research, DeCristofaro felt some of Wisdom’s performance claims seemed too good to be true, but still intrigued, he flew to the company’s Carson City, NV, headquarters for an in-person demo and meeting with Wisdom VP of Sales Ron Rouse.

“I really thought I was going to be disappointed, because usually with Hi-Fi speakers, if you try to really crank them up, they always just crap out,” DeCristofaro said. “But those speakers just delivered with gusto and detail. Needless to say, I was hooked.”

The part DeCristofaro is leaving out of this particular anecdote was that the content he really wanted to “crank up” on the system was scenes from some of the movies he had worked on, including the Oscar-nominated Unbroken.