Two school friends in Herborn.

ASR began in 1980 in Herborn, a small town in the Lahn-Dill district of Hesse, in central Germany. The three letters are easy to misread, and they have nothing to do with Audio Science Review, the measurement forum also known as ASR, or with a founder of any other name. The company’s own history gives the answer: ASR stood for Audio Schäfer und Rompf, after its two founders, Friedrich Schäfer and Michael Rompf, who had been at school together.

Schäfer tells the story on the company website. He says he had hoped to study photographic engineering, did not get a place, and studied economics instead, paying his way by modifying hi-fi equipment and building loudspeakers that sold well among his friends. In the partnership that followed, he says, he was the one who tinkered and built, and Rompf was “a great salesman.”

Loudspeakers came first. The company says its largest speaker earned a very good verdict in the German magazine Stereoplay in 1982, by which time Schäfer had started on the Basis, a phono preamplifier for low-output moving-coil cartridges with two separate power supplies and a battery option; ASR dates the Basis to 1982. In 1983, he says, he designed an amplifier with line inputs and a volume control to go with it, reasoning that the Basis already delivered a line-level signal, so a separate preamplifier was unnecessary. That amplifier was the first Emitter.

Dealers in Germany took the products on, and the company says that in 1985 Stereoplay placed the Emitter straight into its top “absolute Spitzenklasse.” ASR bought a larger 350-square-metre building in 1988. In 1994 Rompf left the business, and from that year, the company says, it traded as ASR Friedrich Schäfer Audiosysteme. Around 2000 Schäfer bought a whole building of about 2,000 square metres on the site of Herborn’s former army barracks, where the company is still based.

An amplifier in a clear box.

The Emitter is an unusual design, and ASR describes it plainly: “in principle a power amplifier with an input selector and volume control,” which shortens the signal path and does away with a preamplifier. Its look follows from that idea. The company says it found that an amplifier in an acrylic case sounded more musical than the same circuit in metal, because acrylic resonates less than sheet steel or aluminium, and that the “purpose-built” design has not changed since the first unit “for good reason.” It uses MOSFET transistors in the output stage, which it compares to valves, and keeps the power supply in a separate box.

The independent record starts with Stereophile. Michael Fremer reviewed the Basis Exclusive phono stage in his “Analog Corner” column in October 2003, and in October 2006 the magazine published his review of the Emitter II Exclusive, priced at $24,900 with its battery supply. He described a four-box system — the main chassis, two outboard power supplies and a battery pack — and wrote that “Designer Friedrich Schäfer doesn’t like metal chassis,” so the amplifier was built of deeply tinted acrylic, with coloured LEDs on the circuit boards showing its operating state. Schäfer told him it was a multi-input power amplifier rather than an integrated amplifier; an editor’s note replied that this was exactly how Stereophile defines an integrated amplifier. Fremer’s conclusion was that it was “among the most neutral-sounding pieces of audio gear I have ever heard.”

Twenty years later the format is the same. In May 2026 fairaudio tested the Emitter I Exclusive HV, listed at 18,000 euros at the time of the test, as a three-box amplifier with an external power supply and a battery supply feeding the input stage. Its reviewer, Stefan Gawlick, described it, like every Emitter from Herborn before it, as really a power amplifier with a volume control.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands here are smaller, long-running German hi-fi makers; six still trade, most run by a founder or a founder’s family.

ASR is in Herborn, Hesse; its owner, Friedrich Schäfer, says he founded it in 1980 with Michael Rompf, who left in 1994. Restek AG of Fuldabrück, near Kassel, says Adrianus Elschot and Bernd Hugo founded it in 1975; Elschot still heads it. Gauder Akustik of Renningen, near Stuttgart, says Roland Gauder and Achim Knapp founded it in 1997.

Phonar of Tarp, in Schleswig-Holstein, says it built speakers for other brands as Scan Akustik before Klaus Henningsen founded Phonar Akustik in 1983; his son Kai took over in 1998. Abacus Electronics of Nordenham began in 1983 as Audio Pro Deutschland, part of Sweden’s Audio Pro, founder Karl-Heinz Sonder told fairaudio; the current company was registered in 2022 with Hanno Sonder as managing director. Symphonic Line of Duisburg belongs to Rolf Gemein, who founded it after an earlier firm, Vernissage, HiFi Test reported.

Isophon is the exception: German Wikipedia says the Berlin company, founded in 1929, was sold to the Bosch/Blaupunkt group in the 1980s while its name stayed with the owning family. Gauder’s firm used the name until building the last Isophon on 31 December 2012.

Five of the six active makers say they build in Germany; trade-press reports place workshops in Nordenham, Duisburg and Renningen. Phonar, a self-described manufactory, said in 2001 that many of its cabinets were made in Scandinavia.

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.

Built in Herborn, sold direct.

ASR remains a small, owner-run business. Its imprint names it ASR Audio Systeme Friedrich Schaefer, a registered sole proprietorship in Herborn, and the range on its website is short: the Emitter I and Emitter II amplifiers, the Basis Exclusive HV and Mini Basis phono stages, a battery power supply and a mains filter. Its manufacturing claim is direct: every ASR amplifier, the company says, is “built by hand, tested and individually fine-tuned” by experienced technicians and is “handmade in Germany.” We give that as its claim; reviewers have described the boxes, not the workshop.

The way it sells has changed. Since 1 January 2019, the company says, it has sold its amplifiers in Germany almost entirely direct rather than through dealers. It invites buyers to listening sessions at the company and to “Emitter Days,” and offers to install an Emitter in a customer’s home for a trial; fairaudio reported an Emitter Day at ASR in November 2024. Abroad, ASR’s own list of reviews includes a Taiwanese magazine, which it says tested the Emitter II under its local name, Luna 8.

ASR also sells second-hand and trade-in Emitters, and publishes the history of each model in detail, version by version — an unusual habit for a company of its size, and one that suits a product it describes as an amplifier “for life, not for the workshop.”

For a design guide, ASR shows how a single practical decision — a clear acrylic case instead of metal — can become a brand’s whole visual identity, unchanged for four decades. Compare Audionet, another German amplifier maker with a strongly technical image, and Octave, a family firm that also builds its amplifiers in-house. For this guide we use a smoked acrylic grey, ink and two blues with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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