A Life in Sound

Where It Started

Music was never just background in the Schulz household. Neither was the way it was reproduced. Ingo’s father worked in sales for Uher Werke in Munich, so good audio equipment was simply part of everyday life at home. Long before he knew anything about circuits, specifications or loudspeaker design, he had already understood something much simpler: the same music could feel very different depending on what brought it into the room.

One of the memories that stayed with him came from HiFi Düsseldorf, an exhibition that existed long before today’s High End show. Uher had a stand there, and one day his father took him along. Ingo no longer remembers exactly how old he was, but he remembers the feeling. The equipment he saw seemed to belong to another world. Suddenly, what had always seemed rather good at home looked almost ordinary. It was probably the first time he encountered that peculiar mixture of fascination and desire that audio can create: better equipment, better sound, beautifully made machines — all of it completely beyond reach. He simply knew that one day he wanted something like this.

Fortunately, there was another way into that world. His grandfather knew electronics well and had devised an unusual method for dealing with Ingo’s rather unimpressive Latin grades. They would learn vocabulary together, and when the work was done properly, the reward was building something: a small microphone amplifier, a tiny power amplifier driving a loudspeaker, or once, a simple electronic organ played by touching a graphite track drawn with a pencil onto a piece of cardboard.

For a child, it felt like magic. But his grandfather did something more important than simply making things work: he explained why they worked. Slowly, the mysterious world inside radios and amplifiers began to make sense. And with understanding came an idea that would stay with Ingo for the rest of his life: if something could be understood, perhaps it could also be built. And if it could be built, perhaps it could be made a little better.

Not every attempt was successful. Some kits were simply beyond him, while simpler projects worked surprisingly well. Loudspeakers followed, often using HECO drivers available to hobbyists at the time — orange baskets included, if memory serves correctly. None of those early creations would deserve a place in audio history, but they made him curious. And curiosity, once established, is remarkably difficult to switch off. 

Into the Music

Somewhere around the end of the 1970s or beginning of the 1980s, Ingo and a friend — let’s call him Thomas — became fascinated by the Backes & Müller BM6 active loudspeaker. It was highly regarded at the time, and the two of them were determined to hear it. Supertramp was everywhere, and a half-speed-mastered pressing of Crime of the Century seemed like exactly the record required. It was expensive enough that neither of them could comfortably afford it alone, so they pooled their money and bought one copy together.

Armed with their precious test record, they travelled to a dealer somewhere near Iserlohn, as Ingo remembers it, and asked to hear the BM6. The owner must have understood within seconds that the two young men standing in front of him were not potential customers. They simply could not afford those loudspeakers. Apparently, that did not matter. He gave them the room and the system, and for almost an hour and a half they listened. They left elated.

Was the BM6 perfect? Almost certainly not. But decades later, that is not what Ingo remembers. What remained was the feeling that those loudspeakers had managed to pick up two young listeners and carry them straight into the music. There was no analysis required, no checklist to work through. Something simply happened.

Around the same period, another piece of equipment appeared that would have an even greater effect. Burmester had already introduced the 777 and 785 preamplifiers when, in 1980, the 808 arrived. To Ingo, it seemed unlike anything else. Modular, flexible, technically ambitious and beautifully made, it suggested that someone had reconsidered not merely a circuit, but the entire idea of what an audio component could be.

He wanted one. Owning it was entirely out of the question.

By then, however, Ingo was completing his training as an electromechanical technician, years of experimenting had accumulated, and the boy who had once only stared at unobtainable equipment had acquired another option: he could build something himself.

If You Can’t Buy It, Build It

The result was Model 1, a preamplifier with dedicated MM and MC phono inputs, three line inputs, tape monitoring and a stepped volume control made with switches rather than a conventional potentiometer. Today, calculating the resistor values for such an attenuator takes seconds. At the time, finding the correct progression became a small engineering project in itself. The eventual breakthrough came courtesy of logarithmic graph paper and a great deal of patience. It worked, and more importantly, it made something clear: electronics had become too important to remain merely a hobby.

Ingo and Thomas were also enthusiastic readers of Elektor, a magazine known for serious projects for people who preferred soldering irons to simply buying finished equipment. One of those projects was the Supra phono preamplifier. Naturally, they built it. And almost as soon as it worked, the next question appeared: could it be better?

Their solution was not particularly subtle. The Supra already used a healthy number of transistors, so they simply doubled them. That worked too. Did it actually sound better? Looking back, Ingo is less certain. It certainly did not sound worse, which at the time seemed enough to declare the experiment a success.

That instinct — to understand something, build it and then immediately wonder what might happen if you changed it — became a recurring theme. Ingo went on to study communications engineering and microprocessor technology, but even as the theory became more sophisticated, building electronics remained an intensely physical process.

One of the first serious power amplifiers he designed during his studies — The Amp No. 1 — is a good example. There were no convenient simulation tools, no PCB software and certainly no undo button. Circuits began with a calculator and squared paper. PCB artwork was created on transparent film using Letraset transfers, with every pad and conductive track rubbed down by hand. And then, after all that work, the amplifier hummed.

The amplifier boards ultimately had to be redesigned and made four times before the problem was solved. It became a far more effective lesson in grounding and current paths than any textbook explanation could have been. Eventually, the amplifier became quiet — and it stayed that way.

Both The Amp No. 1 and the earlier Model 1 preamplifier still exist today and continue to operate decades later. There is something pleasing about that. They are physical reminders of a time when knowledge was acquired slowly, often inconveniently, and occasionally by doing the same thing four times until it was right.

Looking back, three pieces now mark the beginning of that path. The earliest is the Schulz S 602, a small mono integrated amplifier and the first piece of equipment Ingo ever built as a complete, enclosed unit for everyday use. Before it, there had only been experiments on the bench. Model 1 followed, then The Amp No. 1 during his studies. Seen together today, the three make the progression visible: from the first finished device to increasingly deliberate ideas about circuits, construction and control. All three predate Soul of Sound by decades. They belong here not as early products, but as origins.

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More phono stages, amplifiers and loudspeakers followed, including designs using Podszus-Görlich drivers, which at the time carried an almost mythical reputation among enthusiasts. There was more knowledge now, better equipment and more confidence, but underneath it all surprisingly little had changed. The same questions kept returning: why does this work? Why does that sound different? What happens if we change it? Can it be better?

The Thread Never Broke

Professional life eventually led elsewhere. Ingo spent many years in telecommunications and in a corporate environment that, from the outside, had little to do with analogue audio. Audio, however, never really disappeared. Projects continued, amplifiers were built, loudspeakers developed and records played.

Later came the opportunity to write about hi-fi, and eventually to become a publisher himself. Looking back, these things seem less like separate chapters than they probably felt at the time. Engineering, building, listening and writing were simply different ways of approaching the same fascination.

Many years after that first encounter with the Burmester 808, an unexpected circle closed. Ingo had the opportunity to meet Dieter Burmester personally and, during one of their conversations, told him how important the 808 had once been to him. It had been one of the reasons he decided to study electronics more seriously. For Dieter, it was apparently surprising to hear that something he had created decades earlier had influenced the direction taken by someone he had never known at the time. For Ingo, it was simply a chance to say thank you.

And yes, the story eventually came full circle in one other respect. The 808 that had once seemed completely beyond reach finally found its way into Ingo’s own system.

What Really Matters

For all the electronics, engineering and equipment that have accompanied him through life, Ingo has never really thought of himself as the archetypal “critical listener”. He has little interest in listening to music primarily to examine the system in front of him. He wants music to happen.

A bass line should have rhythm and weight. A voice should have body. Instruments should have colour and texture. A recording should create a space you want to remain inside rather than invite you to dissect it. And every once in a while, everything should come together so completely that you stop thinking about amplifiers, loudspeakers, cables and capacitors altogether. You simply listen. Perhaps you smile. Perhaps your eyes become slightly wet. And then you play another record.

Technology matters. Engineering matters. Components, circuits and construction matter. But none of them is the reason to listen to music.

In the end, perhaps the question has remained remarkably similar to the one two young men unknowingly asked when they carried their expensive Supertramp record into that dealer all those years ago:

Does it take you into the music?

If it does, the rest becomes surprisingly unimportant.