Located in San Diego, CA, the Stopper Group of Companies has served over 600 venues. With four separate buildings housing offices, warehouses, assembly and a shipping center, The Stopper Group has been a staple for sound in San Diego. Over the years the growth of the company has mandated the creation of separate divisions.

The Stopper Group is our premiere multi-media contracting and consulting division, overseeing all custom design and installations, above and beyond our “Do-It-Yourself” designs. AFS or America’s Finest Sound is our division in charge of the manufacturing, sales and service of our pre-designed and pre-built portable and fixed systems. The Sound Outlet is our Internet Shop for AV equipment both new, used and refurbished. Whatever you’re audio needs, whatever your knowledge or skill level, one of our departments will have everything you need, along with the guidance to help you make the right choices for your project.

For over 20 years Steve Stopper has served as a Sound Designer, Consultant and Contractor for venues all over the country. He pioneered our “Predesigned-Prebuilt” philosophy, which is now the cornerstone of The Stopper Group of Companies. As an installer specializing in the revamping of other companies already installed existing systems, it became obvious that the typical customer + consultant + installer = equation used by others was rarely successful. Some of the best and most reliable systems came out of designs that took away the experimentation. And so the “Pre-Designed-Pre-built” was born… The “Pre-Designed – Pre-Built” philosophy came out of needing to reject a project up in Alaska. Steve was asked to install Gymnasium sound systems in 14 schools for an Alaskan School District. The district’s tech department had received estimates exceeding their budget for the installations and came to Steve to see what he could do. Unable to commit the time and effort that would be needed including travel, Steve presented the idea of designing and building bullet proof systems in his San Diego shop and shipping them up to site were the local custodians could easily install them. These systems were designed using the highest quality materials but with simple user controls and simple user installation (with all connections pre-labeled and pre-marked for the non-technical). The history of this has been legendary not only because the quality of the sound was beyond expectation but after 15 years every single one of these systems is still functional. With the designs being modular, so that expendable media can be swapped out and updated, they are current with even more years of use expected. The main benefit of this has been that even though technology and the schools have grown the equipment has been able grown with them.
Although most churches and schools make great use of our Pre-built systems, as a contractor Steve has become prominent as the go-to-guy in upgrading existing installations. Besides all the work with schools and the military, our contracting division averages almost a church a week in either upgrades to existing systems or installation of completely new systems.

Steve Stopper has been involved in sound design his whole life. He does sound design for both small and large regional theaters. Steve has designed and installed the Eastlake Performing Arts Center, San Diego Board of Supervisors and Immaculata at the University of San Diego to name a few. Presidents and Popes have used his systems. He supplied dual redundant sound and press
feeds at the Olympic Training Center for the lighting of the torch viewed by over 100 million viewers. He has designed systems used by local TV stations, ESPN and MTV. Steve has served as a consultant for aerospace industry and other governmental agencies developing media. He currently teaches a seminar in the design and use of different audio systems. He is a NCSA member with MATV certification.