ASCENDO - Enthusiasm and Scientific Research
ASCENDO GmbH was founded in 1999 by Norbert Heinz, Dipl. Oec Stefan Köpf and Dipl. Phys. Jürgen Scheuring.
Already at the age of 12, Norbert Heinz and Stefan Köpf together started developing and constructing loudspeakers. The teenage years of the two music-loving and technology-crazy friends were accompanied by regularly changing sets of equipment with large speakers, man-sized subwoofers, Revox tape machines with Studio DBX, first moving-coil cartridges, self-developed and -constructed amplifiers etc..
At the University of Tübingen they got to know Jürgen Scheuring, with whom they have shared their enjoyment of music and audio technology until today. Their propensity for perfectionism, their tendency to question established knowledge, and their joy in finding new approaches have been strong links for all three of them until today.
Jürgen Scheuring´s outstanding professional expertise in the field of measuring technology has been eminently important for ASCENDO GmbH till today. Only those who know and understand the algorithms, on which measurements are based, can read these measurement results correctly.
It was already during their student years that the three of them decided to develop, construct and market the ideal loudspeaker and the worldwide first FIR-filter based room acoustics processor.
After having finished their studies successfully they founded the companies which later became ASCENDO GmbH: Jürgen Scheuring - digital audio technology; Heinz and Köpf - electroacoustic transducers. The entire founding capital was invested in advanced measuring technology.
Research, and Development of the Ideal Loudspeaker
It started with extensive fundamental research regarding the ideal loudspeaker. This research was focussed on the field of human auditory physiology or: how do we hear. Likewise the interaction between loudspeaker and room (-acoustics) was investigated. Attention to the interacting system of loudspeaker and room is essential for good sound. Unfortunately this interrelation has been vastly neglected until today. Parallel to this research the best low, midrange and high frequency drivers were extensively checked and measured, and all available loudspeaker technologies were tested with already very well sounding prototypes.
The ideal loudspeaker corresponds to our way of hearing. The requirements concerning the ideal loudspeaker are therefore extremely high, since it combines the advantages of the best point source drivers with the load capacity, extended range and dynamics of very large multi-way loudspeaker systems.
You cannot achieve the important attributes of the ideal transducer by means of conventional speaker technology: perfect timing together with great efficiency.
This finding was the starting point of an extended evolutionary project, in whose context the ASCENDO loudspeaker technologies SASB, VTA and room acoustics processor DASK were developed. Financially supported by the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology, and endowed with an award by the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, it was the objective to develop technologies for realizing loudspeakers with perfect time response and, at the same time, very high efficiency. The two pathbreaking technologies SASB and VTA are patented.
DASK and the TacT processor were simultaneously presented. They are the first FIR-filter based room acoustics processors in the world.
Update
Presently ASCENDO is headed by Stefan Köpf. With offices in both Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, and its own research and production team ASCENDO is superbly positioned for the future.
Management
Dipl.-Oec. Stefan Köpf
Development of software, organisation,
marketing and distribution