Amar Bose, the visionary engineer, inventor and billionaire entrepreneur whose namesake company, the Bose Corp., became synonymous with high-quality audio systems and speakers for home users, auditoriums and automobiles, died Friday. He was 83.

His death was announced by the Bose Corp. It did not specify where he died or the cause.

As founder and chairman of the privately held company, Bose focused relentlessly on acoustic engineering innovation. His speakers, although expensive, earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.

And by refusing to offer stock to the public, Bose was able to pursue risky long-term research, such as noise-canceling headphones and an innovative suspension system for cars without the pressures of quarterly earnings announcements.

A perfectionist and a devotee of classical music, Bose was disappointed by the inferior sound of a high-priced stereo system he purchased when he was an MIT engineering student in the 1950s. His interest in acoustic engineering piqued, he realized that 80 percent of the sound experienced in a concert hall was indirect, meaning that it bounced off walls and ceilings before reaching the audience.

This realization, using basic concepts of physics, formed the basis of his research. In the early 1960s, Bose invented a type of speaker based on psychoacoustics, the study of sound perception. His design incorporated multiple small speakers aimed at the surrounding walls, rather than directly at the listener, to reflect the sound and, in essence, re-create the larger sound heard in concert halls. In 1964, at the urging of his mentor and adviser at MIT, Y.W. Lee, he founded his company to pursue long-term research in acoustics. The Bose Corp. initially pursued military contracts, but Bose’s vision was to produce a new generation of stereo speakers.

Although his first speakers fell short of expectations, Bose kept at it. In 1968, he introduced the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker system, which was a best-seller for more than 25 years and firmly entrenched Bose, based in Framingham, Mass., as a leader in a highly competitive audio components marketplace. Later inventions included the popular Bose Wave radio and the Bose noise-canceling headphones, which were so effective they were adopted by the military and commercial pilots.

Bose’s devotion to research was matched by his passion for teaching. Having earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, Bose returned from a Fulbright scholarship at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi and joined the MIT faculty in 1956.

He taught there for more than 45 years, and in 2011, donated a majority of his company’s shares to the school.

Bose made a lasting impression in the classroom as well as in his company. His popular course on acoustics was as much about life as about electronics, said Alan Oppenheim, an MIT engineering professor and longtime colleague.

“He talked not only about acoustics but about philosophy, personal behavior, what is important in life. He was somebody with extraordinary standards,” Oppenheim said.