The EVE range has proved popular with distributors since its launch in April
be three storeys high – and the industrial lifts, which painters would use to access the huge canvasses, are intact too. Splatterings of colour, long since dried on the walls, give the place a personality rarely found in a factory building. (The latest development,
GERMANY On the of something special EVE
EVE Audio is making a name for itself and it’s not even been in business a year. Dave Robinsonspent a morning and late afternoon there
LET’S GET the name out of the way first. It’s a bold strategy, calling
yourself EVE Audio, when the founder is the ex-CEO of Berlin’s ADAM Audio. “The name is important, but
maybe not so…” says Roland Stenz, the ex-CEO in question. The company was nearly called Level Audio – but that just partially hides the connection. “If we were to have a completely different name, and then the speakers were using similar technology to ADAM, I would have to have a discussion about that all the time. ADAM is my history, and I was an important part of it, so why should I not recognise it? The name makes it loud and clear where we come from…” EVE – created from ADAM.
The eve of a new beginning. A rebirth, perhaps: like the Eve robot in the Wall-E movie. There’s lots of ways of interpreting the name.
Stenz began his professional
career as an electronic engineer building devices for the broadcast industry. But an underlying passion for loudspeaker technology brought him to the attention of Klaus Heinz and, in short, the two formed ADAM Audio in 1999. The partnership has made an impression in a crowded studio monitor market – ADAM monitors are to be found in studios worldwide. But a split with Heinz in 2010 led Stenz to reassess his options. “It was clear I should start my own business,” he reflects. He immersed himself in R&D work for 18 months, emerging at Frankfurt PL+S this year with partner Kerstin Mischke in tow (also ex-ADAM) and a range of monitor speakers under the EVE Audio brand. The EVE team has now set up
operation in a ‘media city’ in the south-east of Berlin. The HQ was
quite a find: the office’s previous occupier went out of business and left in something of a hurry, leaving furniture, decor and triple- glazed windows intact. A conference/meeting space makes
an ideal product demo room. Transport links are good too. But the ‘deal-closer’ has to be the adjacent space which has become the EVE assembly and testing area. It was formerly a workshop for creating hand- painted theatre and cinema posters before and after German Reunification. The ceiling must
reports Mischke at press time, has been the addition of a 750m3 anechoic chamber. “Impressive and not often found,” she says.) EVE speakers use the Air Motion Transformer (ribbon driver) implemented in ADAM speakers and others (for instance, Elac, Unity Audio). As Mischke puts it: “Just because Roland left ADAM he didn’t change his opinion as to what was the best technology to drive the high frequencies. To look for a way to improve it is logical, but not to abandon it completely.” Stenz says he has taken the design and enhanced it, making it more precise with less distortion, as well as being easier to factory-produce. But being an electronics man, Stenz had ideas about user interface and integrated DSP too. Hence, all EVE SC – for SilverCone – speakers feature a front-panel knob set in a horseshoe of tiny LEDs: this combination gives the user access to desk filter, EQ and shelving filter adjustments, as well as metering levels. The LED ring warns if you are overloading the speaker’s Burr- Brown A-D converter, for instance. Manufacturing takes place in China, under the supervision of an EVE representative. But – importantly – every product is QC tested in Berlin. “Every speaker is unpacked, tested in every function under 115V/60Hz
(L-R): Kerstin Mischke, Phil Skins of Nova Distribution, and Roland Stenz