Accustic Arts, the tradition-steeped company from Germany's south-western region of Swabia, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. While quickly gaining a good reputation in the Far East and also being there commercially successful, the prophet remained less prominent in his own country. As the Mono II prove, the products surely are not the ones to blame.

It was the former company management that held responsible for this by primarily having focussed on the export business. Then two years ago, Hans-Joachim Voss bought the company, and, of course, took the export business further on. In a second step, he is now concentrating on the German dealerships. And for this purpose he was able to win an experienced sales professional: Werner Möhring, also known as a member of the German distributor company “G8 And Friends”. Hans-Joachim Voss charged an open door when he suggested that I could again busy myself with gear from Accustic Arts: My positive attitude towards the company isn’t mainly based on the fact that right from the start the Swabians have had a great affinity to the recording scene and especially to sound engineer Milan Sajé, in which they found an experienced consultant, who not only works on his own or in Accustic Arts’ premises, but also for the renowned recording studio Bauer in Ludwigsburg. Milan Sajé accounts for the production of the five albums, "Uncompressed World Vol. I to Vol. V", released through Accustic Arts Audiophile Recordings, some of which are also available on vinyl. No no, even though I intensively shop-talked with Milan Sajé during my visit to Laufen in 2008 – by the way, I really do not have to be convinced of compression-free recording techniques – and though I could acquire a technical rarity from him at the time, it principally are the components, which have been justifying my positive attitude to Accustic Arts: Shortly after having done a company visit and a report thereafter, I had the opportunity – and the pleasure – to employ myself with the Accustic Arts Drive II and Tube DAC II. The mechanically immensely elaborate transport with its 18 kilograms of weight and the converter with the then quite unusual 32-bit signal processing technology and its tubed output section really wielded a sonically very lasting impression on me.

At the company's headquarters in Lauffen, located at the river Neckar, not only the production for all electronic components, the administration and sales, the warehouse, the test and measuring center, and the – already aforementioned – recording studio with separate recording room are to be found, but the development laboratory as well. Accustic Arts is used to work with different developers, depending on each type of component. Already one single component, such as a converter, requires the wide range of knowledge from electronics, digital and software specialists. However, the involvement of external experts does not necesserarily lead to arbitrariness. The developers do not only shape the components’ sound, but also ensure continuity. For example, the electronics specialist has been responsible for the circuit designs of all amplifier models since the company’s first days. Before I started the testing, he kindly agreed to provide by telephone some information, which is not to be found on the Accustic Arts homepage. By the way, the website also offers the explanation for the – at least to me – orthographically quite strange company name. In its completeness it reads „ACCUrate acouSTIC ARTS“, which reflects the company’s philosophy in full..