Ecouton Audiolab

Company profile

Ecouton audio laboratory At the Bega 11 32657 Lemgo

History: ©Ecouton-Audiolabor, Lemgo "Company history ECOUTON-Audiolabor:

The company ECOUTON-Audiolabor HiFi-Komponenten GmbH was founded in 1979 by Werner Lotterbach and Dieter Fricke as a loudspeaker distributor, after the cooperation with audiolabor, Brinkmann and Knorrn had ended. The product range was a loudspeaker series - 4 models - from Denmark, whose special feature was a solid pine cabinet, with grooves and prongs connecting the corners, named "MRL". Not very successful. Werner Lotterbach, who was actively involved, left the company in the first year due to illness and Manfred Görgen took over his share passively. The "natural wood case" was changed to a foil case and thus successful (!!!). The MRL 120 did an outstanding test win in Stereoplay and the MRL 90 was a winner that outclassed his competitors according to AUDIO. For these speakers a new crossover was developed that produced a completely unusual sound quality. A joint development with Ulrich Rahe resulted in the RABox and in 1981 in the LQL 150. The first test showed the best results, but the sound quality was not good, too little bass, too little treble. The LQL 150 was subjected to the Japanese Kaizen and constantly developed further. Better woofers, new tweeters, especially the new crossover, we called it the "Realistic Phase Crossover". And the Art Transmissionline evolved into the Wavelength Attenuation Maze, the Lambda-Q Maze, LQL. This "earned" the speaker a special position in the field of sound realism or for outstanding naturalness, which was rewarded with a test victory in HiFi Vision in 1990. In 1987 the LQL 200 was released, with a self developed midrange-tweeter, with a very low self-resonance, a very good polar diagram and an outstanding dynamic behaviour. Also the bass was very unusual, pneumatically coupled was an outer driver with an inner driver for an unusually precise and "black" bass reproduction on a Lambda-Q labyrinth with the data natural resonance 30 Hz, damping quality 0.5 and cabinet high pass 2nd order. The speaker received many very good reviews in all special interest magazines and had the reputation to produce an outstanding instrument placement in a realistic and completely detached sound field. The bass response and the dynamic resolution are also exceptional. There are some serious music lovers who consider the LQL 200 to be the most musical speaker available to date. As a final tweak in the series, the LQL 200 was equipped with a time-shifting all-pass filter to compensate for the time offset between bass/midrange and midrange/tweeter type MHT 50/25 caused by any crossover. Thus, we were probably one of the very few on the market to carry out such an optimisation. There were practically no "affordable" amplifiers on the market that could exploit the dynamic potential of the LQL loudspeakers, especially the LQL 200. Therefore, we searched intensively for a cooperation with an amplifier specialist, unfortunately not successfully. We therefore developed our own amplifiers, offered under the brand name "QUINTESSENCE", which were in a league of their own in terms of sound and performance, and were often superior to competing products of twice the price. Unfortunately an unbelievable misfortune happened: In all amplifiers and in our stock the power supply capacitors opened their safety valve and thus more than 100 units, some of which were already at customers, were irreparably destroyed. This resulted in a total damage of about DM 500.000, which brought us to the edge of our existence. Our loudspeaker cable "transientone QUADRAX kombi", which also provided an exceptional performance, was not accepted by the trade because of too complex handling and also burdened us with DM 30,000. However, 1991 was an extremely successful business year and since Chancellor Kohl had promised us flourishing landscapes after reunification, we were hopeful that we would be able to compensate for our losses. Then, as of July 1, 1992, the solidarity surcharge was levied and, after a successful first half of the year, our turnover totally collapsed in the second half, with a further loss of about DM 30,000 at the end of the year. The attempts to get new investment funds in 1993 were also unsuccessful due to the general uncertainty and after a negative information to our house bank, this blocked our business account, whereby we were unable to act. Since the legal and business form of a limited liability company is subject to legal regulations, we regrettably had to file for insolvency after 20 days in May 1993."

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LQL series

• LQL 50
• LQL 70
• LQL 80
• LQL 100
• LQL 120
• LQL 150
• LQL 155
• LQL 160
• LQL 175
• LQL 200
• LQL 300

MRL series

• MRL 50 Plus
• MRL 70
• MRL 80 Plus
• MRL 90
• MRL 90 Plus
• MRL 120 Plus

Pictures

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Weblinks

• German Homepage

• Technical support, repairs and updates for Ecouton Audiolabor, etc.: Klangmeister

• HiFi-Archiv: extensive product catalog collection