History and technology

Why?

As a fourteen-year old boy, I started putting aside all the money I had earned for audio equipment, so that I could listen to music in a better quality. Since then, discovering emotions in music has been my incessant fascination. I have converted my passion into my life style and work. Since 1992 my efforts have been focused on providing the best audio equipment, each corresponding to its budget. Enabling our clients to listen to music, not just sounds, has been my top priority. After over a decade, my company prided itself in providing equipment of a few great producers, still I felt we weren’t bringing out its best potential. The reason were the imperfect loudspeakers offered on the market. Since we hadn’t found proper units, we had to create our own.

At the end of 2016, I invited Grzegorz Matusiak, a constructor of loudspeakers and units, from Polish company APS. Having known Grzegorz for good few years, I knew his way of thinking was unconventional and that he was going to design the units we needed.

How?

Designing ideal speakers requires a detail-oriented concentration on every single element contributing to their design. The starting point was to create a housing which thanks to a particular combination of materials, best proportions and optimal assembly, absorbs undesired vibrations generated by the units.

Next, on the basis of listening sessions we were looking for speakers, which would best fit the realization of our assumptions. We picked the units by Israeli company Morel.

The basis of the bass reproduction are two bass reflex, slotted tunnels located along the rear wall of the housing. The housing is tuned in customized way. Thus, we can avoid single-range rumbling, so characteristic of bass reflex systems.

The construction of the crossover not known anywhere else guarantees the ideal time coherence and tonal balance of the whole frequency range.

What?

After three years of work, our first construction was born. It was supposed to be the best possible construction ever, and to become the basis for the subsequent projects. During its construction, we had to consider the limits of the possibilities of carpenter’s workshops, and curb the more audacious ideas of ours.

After the successful debut of Maurice model during the AudioVideoShow in 2019 in Warsaw, we decided to simplify the construction of some elements in the next models and partially apply cheaper materials in the cabinets. Thus our offer includes two more economical models which match the equipment from the beginning of our price lists.

The names of speakers stem from the names of my favourite French composers  of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. They created music leaving a lot of space for its listeners. They did not try to totally overwhelm the public but involved them in the play instead. 

Erik - part of the crossover

Claude - assembly

At the beginning of the 90’s, unhappy as I was about the performance of loudspeakers Tonsil, I made an attempt to reconstruct them. I came to the conclusion however that what needs to be done is building new ones. With help of a luthier I knew, I designed floor-standing, three-way loudspeakers, based on the loudspeakers of Polish company Tonsil.  The loudspeaker housing was made of plywood. A couple of my friends were interested in buying them and that is how company ESA came into the world.

Adapting a „new approach” to the production of loudspeakers, I was enriched by decades of experience in dealing with constructions of many producers. What disturbed me in their sound was the dynamic compression with great leaps of sound levels as well as quite many artefacts non-existent in the recorded material. This comes from applying MDF in housings, which is inexpensive and very easy to process.

Thus the housing for loudspeakers had to be defined anew, what materials it ought to be made of and how. I was searching for material much stiffer than MDF, HDF even, and which additionally would properly absorb the vibrations of the units. I came across a natural composite – as it usually happens – by accident. After a few trials, it proved to be ideal.

A befriended carpenter of mine carried out many tests and found an appropriate epoxy glue applied in the housing.

Then came the next step: finding the best loudspeakers. Having performed many listening sessions, we chose the speakers of Israeli company Morel. They sound fantastically and are ideally repetitive at the same time, so that each pair of a particular type behaves in the same way.

Having distributed the audio electronics and assembling them for years at homes of my numerous customers, I knew what kind of loudspeakers they needed. I had many long conversations with Grzegorz Matusiak, the co-author and main constructor. It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that in total we have had a good half a century of work analyses and conclusions. Together we spoke about the problems of home loudspeakers such as instruments and vocals blurred in space, divided stage, lack of micro- and macrodynamics, hissing and stinging high tones, dull midrange, booming bass without structure. „If not a blanket over your head, then bleeding ears and glass right into your face.”

Finally, Grzegorz concluded that he could see a chance in improving the quality of our newly worked out loudspeakers to the level home loudspeakers had never reached. During one summer holiday, he disappeared for long and it looked as if nothing was going on. But then the ace in the hole came.

With this, he later designed a few constructions. We decided to produce four of them, and there are more on the way.