1993
Sound Specialists is Founded
Gideon Elfassy founded Sound Specialists as a small residential audiovisual company designing and installing volume control devices in the Chicago area.
1999
A Mission is Born
We were introduced to a quadriplegic client living in a 35,000 sq/ft. home. Our founding team — all of whom are still with the company — devised a robotic arm for his wheelchair and built the first residential control system to give him complete independence: doors, windows, lighting, appliances, security, AV, and a geolocation system so caretakers could follow him on an interactive floorplan. This project birthed our chapter as a control systems company.
Our mission: use our passion for integration to simplify technology and improve the lives of our clients.
Early 2000s
Expanding Into Commercial & Luxury Multifamily
Our passion for integration expanded beyond residential architecture into the luxury multifamily sector. We delivered thousands of units across iconic Chicago developments — and beyond. Our Client Services team developed technologies enabling an 89% remote resolve rate, providing real-time service and same-day resolutions without dispatching a technician.
89%
Remote Resolve Rate
2015
Entering Commercial Security
After 28 years of doing residential security work, we recognized a deep lack of enterprise integration expertise in the commercial security market. We applied our controls platform and project delivery model to a new frontier.
2020
Willis Tower — The Defining Project
The Willis (Sears) Tower was replacing its entire access control, video management, visitor management, and security infrastructure as part of Blackstone's major repositioning. Our team fully documented, redesigned the network and security infrastructure, replaced over 1,465 panels across 168 IDF rooms, converted 34 lanes of turnstiles, 110 elevator kiosks, and 10,000+ alarm points — all in under 8 months at 11 floors per week, with zero downtime.
1,465
Panels Replaced
8 mo.
Completion Time
10,000+
Alarm Points
2021
4S Security LLC is Launched
Sound Specialists formally opened 4S Security LLC. to bring white-glove service and deep integration expertise to the commercial security market. Leveraging 30 years of experience, but with renewed focus on iconic mixed-use environments.
2024
Telemetri — The Platform
We began the journey of operationalizing our integration expertise and built Telemetri — the built environment's purpose-built software integration tool. Telemetri allows data interoperability, normalization, and standardization across any physical security system. It enables IT teams to connect and orchestrate data, gives security teams a common framework, and allows physical security teams to write integrations without custom code. By unifying these fragmented systems into a single data layer, Telemetri turns isolated data into orchestrated action — giving the built environment one source of truth to connect, transform, and make data usable across every system that runs it.
Our average technician tenure is 11 years. All founding technicians are still with the company — 25 years and counting.