A hearing-conservation business that found its audience on stage.

ACS, which trades as ACS Custom, makes ear-moulded products: custom-fit hearing protection, custom in-ear monitors and communication earpieces. The company says it was founded in 1994 by Andy Shiach as a business “dedicated to hearing conservation and the manufacture of custom-fit products for hearing protection,” and it marked 30 years with a party at the Gallery at Tileyard in London in October 2024.

The public record starts a little later. Companies House shows the operating company was incorporated in April 1996 under the name Elcea (UK) Limited, became Advanced Communications Solutions Limited in 1999 and took its current name, Advanced Communication Solutions Limited, in 2000. So the brand dates itself to 1994 and the registered company to 1996; we give both. Andrew Shiach appears in the filings from the company’s first days, and Companies House lists him as its person with significant control, holding a majority of the shares, from 2017 until January 2026.

The company is based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, where its registered office sits on an industrial estate and where it runs an impression clinic. A second clinic operates at Tileyard, the music-business campus near King’s Cross in London, which places ACS close to the studios and artists who make up much of its custom.

Filters first, then monitors.

ACS’s own account of its rise runs through musicians. Its 2017 “About” page says the company built its name with ER-Series hearing protectors “designed specifically for musicians” and with its first in-ear monitor, the T3. It then developed its own filters, the PRO Series, which it calls the industry’s “go to” hearing-protection product. Spec sheets archived on its site name a run of filter models, PRO 10, PRO 15, PRO 17, PRO 20 and PRO 27, along with the PRO Impulse and the Pacato universal-fit earplugs. Those numbers refer to the attenuation the company publishes for each filter; we do not restate the figures here, and readers should check the current data sheets and the standard cited.

The same filters, the company says, are used well beyond music, “into industry, military and motorsport.” Its archived downloads include communication earpieces such as the DriverCom and PRO Communicator, which sit in the same moulded shells as the earplugs. ACS describes itself as ISO 9001-certified and lists conformity with EN 352-2, the European standard for ear plugs.

In-ear monitors became the second pillar. Archived product pages from the late 2010s list the Evolve, Evoke and Emotion custom monitors, with “Live” versions and an Engage Live model built around an ambient channel. ACS’s recent marketing describes its custom monitors as handmade in the UK from soft medical-grade silicone, moulded to impressions of each ear.

The process is the product. A custom earplug or monitor begins with an impression of the wearer’s ear canal, taken at a clinic or by a dealer, from which the shell is made; ACS says it uses 3D manufacturing technology “for a precise and reproducible product.” In April 2026 it added an Express Manufacturing option that moves an order to the front of the production queue, and it recommends booking impressions directly with its Banbury and London teams. That made-to-order model shapes the brand: each piece, as the company puts it, “is a one-off item and each customer is completely unique.”

Endorsement is part of the pitch. ACS publishes stories about drummers, DJs and touring engineers who wear its products, and Wikipedia notes that the DJ Evan Duthie became an ACS endorsee in early 2016. Its own content has broadened from product news to hearing-health content, including a 2025 documentary made with the charity Tinnitus UK, though it presents those as information rather than as medical advice.

Hearing protection as product design.

The seven brands in this group all sell earplugs, but they come from very different places and decades. The oldest is German and more than a century old; the newest names arrived in the 2010s, selling online and, in one case, through crowdfunding. What they share is a product people put in their ears to turn the world down, sold to concert-goers, musicians, sleepers and travellers.

Three are new names built around filtered plugs for music and nightlife. Loop is a Belgian company founded in 2016 by the childhood friends Maarten Bodewes and Dimitri O., according to Wikipedia and the company, and CNBC reported in 2023 that it was headquartered in Antwerp. Eargasm says it is based in Southern California and was founded in 2015 by Ryan Parry. Earasers belongs to Persona Medical of Florida, whose president, Don Campbell, designed the soft silicone plug, the company says.

Two date from the 1990s. Alpine Hearing Protection says it was founded in the Netherlands in 1994 as a pioneer of reusable filtered earplugs for the general public. In 2025 the Belgian investor Gimv announced it was taking a majority stake. ACS says it was established in 1994 to make custom-fit hearing protection, and describes itself as a privately owned UK company that also makes in-ear monitors.

The last two are the outliers. Flare Audio began as a three-person pro-audio maker in a garden garage on England’s south coast, it says, before crowdfunding its Isolate ear protector; Companies House lists Flare Audio Limited, of Lancing in West Sussex, as incorporated in 2007. Ohropax was founded in Berlin in 1907 by the pharmacist Maximilian Negwer, is still run by his family, and makes its wax plugs in Wehrheim, near Frankfurt.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A privately owned UK company with a global dealer network.

ACS has long described itself as a privately owned UK company. It says it now operates in more than 24 countries through “a network of esteemed dealers, manufacturing partners, and dedicated ACS facilities.” In January 2026 the company filed with Companies House that it knows of no registrable person with significant control; the filings do not say more, and we do not guess at what changed.

Where things are made is worth reading carefully. ACS’s 2024 and 2025 posts call its custom monitors handmade in the UK, while a customer notice updated in November 2025 blamed longer lead times on “exceptionally high demand and a change in our manufacturing facilities in Europe,” adding that universal-fit products were unaffected. We report both statements as the company made them.

Its sign-off, “Serious about sound — protecting ears for over 30 years,” states the positioning plainly. ACS sits alongside the American pioneers of musicians’ hearing protection and custom monitors, such as Etymotic and Westone, but from a British base that serves studios, motorsport and industry alike.

For a design guide, ACS shows how a hearing-protection maker can build an identity from a numbered filter system and a moulded, made-to-order object rather than a mascot or a loud colour. Compare Etymotic and Westone. For this guide we use studio navy, ink and filter blue on silicone mist with a technical sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ACS’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.