WHAT WAS AND NO LONGER IS
That is, about Polish audio companies that are no longer heard of

⌈ Polish audio industry is as strong as ever. For the first time in the history of hi-fi, products with the inscription Made in Poland are being tested and advertised - and both of these elements are important - in the biggest magazines in the world, for example, the American “Stereophile” and “The Absolute Sound”, the British “Hi-Fi News” and “Hi-Fi+”, the Japanese “Stereo Sound” and many, many others from all over the world. And these are tests highlighting outstanding sound quality AND superb performance. Before that, however, a number of companies had to rise and fall to become the leaven of this revolution. ⌋

THE KRAKOW SWIMING POOL COMPLEX in Zakrzówek, in a ten-minute walk distance from my place, is an example of success so big that it can cause a collapse. The place, not far from the historic center of Krakow, is currently one of the hottest spots in the royal city. The flooded quarry on the southern slope of the Twardowski Rocks, from which limestone was extracted until the early 1990s, is referred to in the local press as the Polish Maldives or Polish Croatia.

For many years it was an unsupervised area around which, on the high slopes, there were extremely scenic paths that I like to traverse with my children. It was also the site of a thriving scuba base, that also witnessed many tragic accidents, both drownings and falls from heights. However, the charm of the place was so great that it did not deter more daredevils and amateurs from swimming in the crystalline water, with depths reaching up to thirty-one meters.

⸜ CM-11 speakers, HF № 1, May 2004

Five years ago, the city decided to buy back the land from a private investor and set up a real open-air bathing area. The whole project cost 60 million zlotys, 26 of which went to buy the land. The result was a unique place, with five pools of varying depths, lifeguard stations, a cafe and, above all, fantastic views. Not surprisingly, it quickly became a mecca for people looking to have a good time. And then the trouble began.

After all, there were so many people eager to swim in Zakrzówek's waters that one of the pools was quickly damaged, and after each day, mountains of garbage were - literally - left on the bridges. So the city decided to limit the number of simultaneous users, first to 1,000, and when that didn't work, to 800. This resulted in very long queues to buy tickets, as new people were only allowed in when someone left the place permanently. In the queues, people stood (and are still standing, as the summer is hot) for several hours at a time, in the full sun.

Again, the city wanted to do something about it and divided the queue into two parts - for holders of the Krakow City Card, which is available to residents who are registered and pay taxes in Krakow, and for others. This could not please many people, so the governor revoked the regulation, arguing that it was incompatible with constitutional equality. The resolution was revoked, but the problem remained. Without deciding who is right and who is wrong, I will say that the governing body of Krakow prepared something wonderful, which, however, bent under the weight of its own success. Who knows how it will all turn out. I will add that since the swimming pools were built I have been to see them once, in the autumn, and I avoided them ever since.

I began with an example from my own backyard, because it seemed symptomatic to me. For here is a great idea, brilliantly implemented, instead of solving problems brought another, much more difficult to solve. The situation is similar with the topic I would like to address in the latest “Polish” issue of “High Fidelity”, namely domestic companies that at one time appeared on the map of Polish audio, and were not heard from since or which seemingly are there, but in fact are not. Many of them were very interesting, had interesting ideas and intriguing solutions to problems, that we regularly wrote about. And yet they are no longer there.

Reaching out to → HF ARCHIVE, and specifically to its oldest section from 2004-2009, where we are dealing with the first incarnation of the magazine, we immediately locate the first such manufacturer and its speakers CM-11. Its designers I’d known before, one of them worked in the Krakow distribution store of one of the Polish representatives of well-known companies, today I can no longer remember which ones. They were really brilliantly made, but this project collapsed rather quickly, before the company even came up with a name (!); more → HERE.

⸜ Acuhorn NERO 125 speakers, HF № 8, December 2004

Shortly thereafter, in the June issue, we looked at speakers from another Krakow-based designer, SOUND & LINE → CENTURION. This was a good introduction to what the company offered in the following years, and Marcin, its designer became a member of the Krakow Sonic Society. Two meetings, № 53 and № 71, were conducted at his home and concerned K2HD discs and components in speaker crossovers; more → HERE and → HERE. This adventure lasted much longer, but at some point the company simply disappeared.

A slightly different was the story of the ACUHORN, which we first wrote about back in November 2004, and a month later tested its Nero 125 speakers, → HERE. The situation was different in that the company still has a website, and WOJTEK UNTERSCHUETZ, its designer, has until recently contacted us from time to time. But the website dates to 2019, and we haven't heard from him since then either. And it is, after all, a very cool manufacturer. Its beginning was marked by horn loudspeakers with a single wide-range drivers, which in later years were joined by innovative amplifiers and file players.

February 2005 witnessed a cable test by AUDIONOVA; more → HERE. It was not a manufacturer of cables, but only selected the designs it was interested in from Taiwan and China, terminated them with plugs and offered great-looking, transparent boxes to go with them. As Mr. MAREK SOŁTYSIK, its founder, said in a test at the time, the idea was to sell good-sounding cables at the best possible price. And he did it perfectly. In our last test of this company we looked at the Volcano, Lightspeed and Pure Connect Reference models, after which the company - for personal reasons - disappeared from the market.

I also can't find any information about another company that seemed to have a bright future, namely Radicon, which once sold products under the brand name AMPLIFIKATOR. As I wrote in the test of its amplifier, it was a rather unusual phenomenon on the Polish audio scene. Mr. TOMASZ BURSKI, the man behind the brand, was already then one of the most experienced designers in the Vistula River country. Using his experience, knowledge and enthusiasm, he developed an amplifier called Amplifikator (2000), which then smoothly evolved into a nicer, slightly improved version Amplifikator 2003 → test HERE.

⸜ Amplifikator Bitofon CD Player, HF № 41, September 2007

These amplifiers were well made and sounded very well. It was a company that, as one of absolutely few in Poland, offered a CD player, bearing the cool name → BITOFON. The device was based on a Philips VAM1210 drive, seated on a specially selected aluminum frame, Burr-Brown chips, today “legendary”, Burr-Brown DF 1704 digital filter, and two PCM1704 D/A converters. The last information I found about this company dates back to 2012. The same goes, by the way, for yet another Polish manufacturer, this time of power cables, the → AC ARTECH.

In July 2005, № 15, a test of Beta speakers from ARGOS was published at „HighFidelity”; more → HERE. Their cabinets were made of resin-based composite castings with experimentally selected fillers and modifiers. Today it may seem trivial, after all, we have only just tested loudspeakers from the Polish company Gemini with composite enclosures doped with cement, Rega works in a similar way in the Aya model, also Pylon designed its latest top constructions with composite enclosures.

But, let me remind you, we are talking about 2005, that is, design from nineteen years ago! It turned out, if I understand correctly, that the market was not ready for such radical solutions, or at least the Polish market. After all, Wilson Audio had been equipping its speakers with enclosures of this type for years. I liked the speakers very much, it was an interesting idea, and yet the company disappeared very quickly. In the following years, we tested cables from the Krakow company HOTLINE, which outsourced its designs to the Krakow company Kabel (№ 27, more → HERE), and which was the “house brand” of the Chillout Studio store.

Many of the companies tested in that first period of “High Fidelity” are still in business, but you don't hear much about them, to cite such brands as HARPIA ACUSTICS, whose Doberman speakers I used for a long time, AUDIO ACADEMY or STUDIO 16Hz. Also gone is PRO-TONSIL, a brand of Mr. PRZEMYSŁAW KOSERCZYK, whose Siesta speakers we tested in July 2007 (№ 39, more → HERE). Today their designer, a luthier by profession, is an employee of the technical department of Radio Poznan.

Reading the test titles from the following years, I realized that all along, however, through all these years I was accompanied by a brand that still exists today, and that is doing very well, namely Jarek Waszczyszyn’s ANCIENT AUDIO. Its “here and now condition” is best evidenced by the excellent Joy CD player we are testing in this issue of HF. At some point, specifically March 2008, another company appeared, which doesn’t just still exist and is do well, but has become a manufacturer with worldwide reach. The GIGAWATT is the brand in question, transformed from Power Audio Lab, which then proposed the PF-2 AC power strip, the basic principles of which are also clear in its latest products; more → HERE.

⸜ Gigawatt PF-2 power strip; HF № 47, March 2008

Mr. DARIUSZ GRYGLEWSKI, designer of JAG ELECTRONICS, whose 300B amplifier we tested in September 2009, and speakers in the following years, has also found his niche, as has Mr. EDWARD CZYŻEWSKI's LINEAR AUDIO RESEARCH, whose Argos preamplifier we ‘dissected’ back in 2004; and Marcin, one of the members of the Krakow Sonic Society, still has one of his amplifiers; more → HERE. And being at LAR, I'll add that Mr. Jakub Wołochowicz, currently representing the company, announced its latest amplifier, the test of which we hope will be coming soon.

So this first, pioneering period ended with a positive balance. Several Polish companies had their debut, and today they are present on the market, but it was the following years that were the time of growing up and the rapid explosion of Polish brands. Back in 2009, Mr. Andrzej Stelmach showed his DAC with STELAUDIO logo, designated DAC-04, and a year later Mr. Adam Ostrowski presented speakers by MINIMA AUDIO - a company that also doesn't seem to exist anymore, but in the same 2010 I saw for the first time anti-vibration feet from FRANC AUDIO ACCESSORIES.

PAWEŁ SKULIMOWSKI, with whom - I couldn’t foresee that at the time - we had become friends, wrote a letter to the ephemeral Hyde Park section of our magazine at the time, in which he talked about his just-formed company; more → HERE. No one could possibly have guessed that in a fairly short time he would become one of the more interesting Polish manufacturers of anti-vibration and other products, and that his feet would find their way into as many as two products of a well-known Western company - we are talking about SACD and CD players, respectively, Ayon Audio CD-35 HF Edition and CD-35 Mk II HF Edition, with which we celebrated the 15th and 18th anniversaries of our magazine.

Subsequent issues of HF hosted speakers from AVCON, RLS and QBA. The first one was a harbinger, announcing the Polish Audio Cluster. A year later, we devoted the entire September issue of HF to it. Looking at their roster posted on the AVcon website, it's not hard to conclude that some of its members have also, if not disappeared completely, significantly reduced their activities, and the website itself has not been serviced or updated for a long time; more → HERE.

⸜ Amare Musica ENTROPY integrated amplifier, HF № 113, September 2013 • photo press mat.

A large part of the absentees, whose websites have disappeared, are the speaker manufacturers. But also quite a few amplifier makers, seemingly “safe” products, are a thing of the past. One that comes to mind in particular is BALTLAB. Admittedly, I never tested it in HF, but I presented such a device in “Audio”. And they were indeed very successful products. Similarly, by the way, to AMARE MUSICA, from which Audio Phonique sprouted, or MY SOUND.

Finally, a few words about turntable manufacturers. It got very sad and made me feel sad when on the website of the company ZONTEK I saw that the latest “event” dated to 2014. And that never bodes well. And they offered an excellent turntable; more → HERE. Much cheaper, and very interesting were also turntables by → SHAPE OF SOUND. And there was also FONICA. Yes, for some time turntables using this historic name were present on the market, the rights to which were bought by Complex Capital Group. Mr. RADOSŁAW ŁODZIATO, who ran it, had a good idea. He found interesting designers, and in a short time there were both turntables and tonearms for them in the company's lineup. The company, unfortunately, no longer exists.

⸜ Fonica F-901 VIOLIN deck with Fonica F-03 rev.3 tonearm, HF № 125, September 2014

There are more manufacturers who were once important in our world, but who are no longer there or are only barely operating. Therefore, the more respect is due to those who have not so much survived the time, but flourished. Like Gigawatt (formerly Power Audio Labs), Ancient Audio, ESA, Pylon Audio, Fezz Audio, J.Sikora, Ferrum (formerly making equipment for Mytek), Franc Audio Accessories, as well as Struss and others. Congratulations to everyone, both those who still are a part of audio industry and those for whom it is a thing of the past. It was a privilege and a great pleasure for me to be able to work with you. Thank you. ●

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Brands citied in the text: SOUND & LINE, ACUHORN, AUDIONOVA, RADICON, AMPLIFIKATOR, AC ARTECH, ARGOS, HOTLINE, HARPIA ACUSTICS, AUDIO ACADEMY, STUDIO 16Hz, PRO-TONSIL, ANCIENT AUDIO, GIGAWATT, JAG ELECTRONICS, LINEAR AUDIO RESEARCH, STELAUDIO, MINIMA AUDIO, FRANC AUDIO ACCESSORIES, AVCON, RLS, QBA, BALTLAB, AMARE MUSICA, MY SOUND, ZONTEK, FONICA.

WOJCIECH PACUŁA
Chief editor