He worked for Altec Lansing for two years as chief engineer for the pro audio division and was granted two more patents.

Hughes studied physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology including audio engineering under Dr. Eugene "Gene" Patronis.

[1] His senior project was a 3-way loudspeaker system that Hughes describes as sounding good but looking shabby because of his poor woodworking skills.

Being without a diffraction slot, the QT waveguide was free from problems with apparent apex, making it arrayable as needed for public address purposes.

[3] In New York City, Hughes presented a paper on the technology at the Audio Engineering Society convention in September 1999.

TEF is a system that incorporates Richard C. Heyser's time delay spectrometry (TDS) method to analyze sound waves.

[7] Hughes also programmed in MATLAB, a computing environment that allowed him to visualize the complex output pattern of a loudspeaker system under test.

Toward this end, Hughes developed a software tool called PolarSum which eliminated much of the drudge work of taking a great many polar plot measurements.

[1] In 2000, Hughes became an instructor of TEF II systems, part of a team that included Don Eger and Russ Berger.

[1][2] Hughes joined Altec Lansing in May 2002 to serve as senior engineering manager in the professional audio division.

Biamp, an audio electronics and media networking manufacturer in Beaverton, Oregon, hired Hughes in May 2021 as principal engineer of the electroacoustics division.

[14] The EASE simulation software that Hughes had been using for years came under management by the Ahnert Feistel Media Group (AFMG) in early 2006.

At the beginning of 2011, AFMG brought Hughes on board to consult on software development and to join their team of product support and advanced training experts.

[17] In 2008 in San Francisco he took part in a panel discussion about the state of the art in loudspeaker design in profession sound reinforcement.

[21] Hughes also participated in a panel discussion composed of Peter Mapp, Floyd Toole and Kurt Graffy comparing objective audio measurement results with subjective methods.

[22] In New York in 2011 he revisited the topic of subwoofer directionality as a member of a panel including Jim Risgin of On Stage Audio, Paul Bauman of JBL, and consultant Doug Fowler.

In 2006, he served as chairman of the sound measurement working group which established testing methods and marketing specifications for subwoofers.