A Triangle engineer sets up on his own.

Atohm is a small French maker of loudspeakers, drive units and speaker kits based at Pin, a village in Haute-Saône about fifteen kilometres from Besançon, in Franche-Comté. The company behind the name is Welcohm Technology, a limited company registered on 15 November 2000, according to the French business register, which gives its address as 12 rue du Breuil in Pin, its activity as the manufacture of consumer electronics and its manager as Thierry Comte. The Atohm website gives the same address.

The fullest account of how it began comes from 6moons, whose reviewer Joël Chevassus set it out in a review of the Atohm GT1 published in early 2012. Atohm, he wrote, “was founded by designer Thierry Comte.” Comte had worked as technical director of Triangle Industries from 1995 to 2000, the loudspeaker maker from Picardy. In 1996 he met Cédric Aubriot, later the head of Waterfall Audio, and the two began what the review calls a lasting friendship and technical partnership. By early 2000 Comte had decided to leave; after “a short joint partnership with Onix/Asia,” the review says, he founded Welcohm Technology and then registered the Atohm trademark.

Several unrelated French businesses have also been registered under the name “Atohm” — among them a battery maker near Paris and an electrical contractor in Provence — so the register entry that matters for the loudspeaker brand is Welcohm Technology. The company today says it draws on “more than 25 years” of experience, a figure that seems to count Comte’s own career rather than the company’s age.

Drivers first, then speakers named after winds.

Atohm started from the inside of the loudspeaker. According to 6moons, Welcohm began in the drive-unit business, supplying other makers and home builders, and sold its finished speakers mainly as kits. Its early customers for drivers included Waterfall and Onix, “but also more famous brands like Triangle or Elipson,” the review says. In 2004, it adds, Comte decided to turn Welcohm into a complete loudspeaker company, selling finished speakers as well as kits; a 2005 kit model, the Diablo, was singled out by the reviewer as a bargain.

The company dates its first loudspeaker, the Sirocco, to 2002, followed in 2007 by the Sirocco Series. Its archived website lists a review of the Sirocco in Prestige Audio Vidéo dated June 2002, which fits. The Sirocco set a naming habit. Atohm’s models have taken the names of winds — Sirocco, Ghibli, Joran and Rafale, the French word for a gust — and its speaker kits are called Eurus, after the Greek east wind. The company describes the Sirocco as “a warm and powerful wind.” In 2004 its website carried the line “Notre but ultime… vous faire vibrer” — “our ultimate goal… to make you vibrate.”

The GT series became the flagship. 6moons expanded the letters as “Grand Thrill” and said Comte took three years to launch it. The review describes the GT1 as a compact two-way monitor with a 28mm silk-dome tweeter and a 13cm alloy-cone mid/woofer from Atohm’s top “Absolute Series” drivers, a crossover the company calls Time Coherent Crossover, pairs matched to within 0.8dB, and a French price of €2,500 a pair. The reviewer called Atohm “one of the few small manufacturers who still fabricate their very own transducers,” and said Waterfall and Show Max were among French makers using its drivers.

Design and documentation.

Beyond France’s best-known hi-fi names, a set of smaller makers has grown up in the regions, often around a single founder or family. Their records are uneven: some can be traced through trade reviews and France’s company register, others mainly through their own websites.

Two of the digital-source makers in this guide grew up near Toulouse, a centre of the aircraft industry. In 2000 Audio Aero gave an address at Cornebarrieu, beside Toulouse-Blagnac airport, and described itself as the audio division of an aerospace subcontractor; Metronome Technologie is registered at Montans, in the Tarn, according to France’s company register.

The loudspeaker makers are spread more widely. Jean-Marie Reynaud says its brand was founded in 1967 at Barbezieux, in Charente, and that the founder’s son, Jean-Claude Reynaud, has run it alone since his father’s death in 2011. Atohm gives an address at Pin, in Haute-Saône, under the name Welcohm Technology, and Apertura describes itself as a brand of Stentor SAS at Puceul, north of Nantes.

Valve amplification has its own small workshops. Audiomat says it was founded in 1986 by the brothers Denis and Norbert Clarisse, and that its first amplifier used sixteen 6AS7G triodes; the company is registered at La Destrousse, near Marseille. Lavardin Technologies, which makes amplifiers, spent 25 years at Fondettes, near Tours, before registering a new office in Tours itself in late 2025, according to the company register.

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.

Made, the company says, in its own workshops.

The current range keeps the same structure: finished speakers, the parts to build them, and electronics. The website lists the GT-HD series, a new Sirocco series introduced in 2024 with what the company calls entirely new drivers, cabinets and crossovers, the Rafale subwoofers, and a power amplifier, the RS700 GT Edition. It also sells drive units, subwoofer amplifier modules, Eurus and Rafale kits, ZEF cables and connectors.

On manufacturing, Atohm’s claims are specific. It says its drivers are “intégralement conçus et assemblés en France” — entirely designed and assembled in France. For the RS700, it says the main digital board was designed in partnership with the French firm Soledge, the surface-mount boards are made by a company in Alsace and the metalwork is French, with each unit assembled, wired, tested and programmed in its own workshops; it adds that it built a dedicated version for Waterfall Audio. Its subwoofer modules use ICEpower amplifier stages, it says. We give these as the company’s statements. The register places Welcohm in the smallest headcount band, one or two employees, which suggests a very small core staff.

The brand has a modest public presence. An atrium room at the 2018 HIGH END show in Munich was “mainly reserved for the Atohm brand,” 6moons reported. Its website quotes recent reviews, including a “Remarquable” rating for the Sirocco 1.24 in the French magazine Vumètre in January 2025 and an editor’s choice for the Sirocco 2.24 in Poland’s Audio Video in September 2025.

For a design guide, Atohm shows how a small engineering firm can build an identity from a naming system — winds — and from claims about what it makes itself. Compare Triangle, where Thierry Comte was technical director, and Elipson, named by 6moons as an early customer for its drivers. For this guide we use graphite, white and an ochre with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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