3-Dec-2000

Who is JOB, anyhow ?

The Legend

They sing to the tambourine and harp,
and rejoice to the sound of the flute.
The Book of Job 21:12

The JOB adventure started few years ago in Zurich, Switzerland.

A group of nice (we know, we know..) University students had to work on an electronic project for their Master degree. They decided to try selling it afterwards to the flourishing Swiss Pro Audio Industry (ever heard of Revox, Studer, or Nagra ?). Their choice was to develop a professional amplifier for monitoring during live recording or for sound distribution in studios.
Their idea was to create the smallest possible 200W amp of ultimate quality able to be used in portable equipment.
The team never wished to sell their amp to audiophiles since they mostly considered those as unable to judge real technology to its real value.
Because they had much more time to refine their design than it is usual in audio companies, the student team achieved a technological level which was virtually unseen before. The bandwidth of their circuit (nearly 10MHz), its time coherence (within picoseconds for 20Hz-20kHz) and the extraordinary compactness of their design immediately attracted a lot of attention from their professors, their friends, and from few audiophiles passing by.

The project to sell it to professionals failed miserably... No interest for such a performance, despite the very reasonable price, ever raised during all the presentations they made of the product.
And despite their initial intention to avoid the audiophiles, each one of the audio fanatic approaching their amp jumped on it ! The interest among the best informed Audio circles in Europe grown rapidly, much more rapidly than their production capacity, so the waiting list became soon legendary, even increasing their reputation...
The audiophiles who got one of the few samples from the early days were so enthusiastic that it finally came to the ear of some European hi-fi companies.

The JOB amp brings new technological solutions allowing it to reach unique performance in speed, in time linearity and noise modulation rejection, at any power level. But the most spectacular achievement lies in the extraordinary compactness of the design, the very low cost of production and the perfect repetitivity of the performance from sample to sample.

The meeting with the people of Stereolith came later, as a coincidence. There was little chance to see the two products together since Stereolith was selling essentially to the hi-fi dealers who never saw a JOB. But the practical advantage of the Stereolith Speaker principle, its compactness, ease of use, technological originality and affordable price represented a good chance for both products to be associated. The Stereolith was attractive for some professional use, Home Theater market and Computer buffs. Associated amp was critical for the sonic result. Put together with a JOB amp, it was becoming a very attractive package. Soon, a better Stereolith speaker version, refined to match the speed, look, ease of use of the JOB amp was created, and soon became known as the JOB speaker.
Since then, both amp and speaker have been heavily captured by the Multimedia people who listen to music when they work on their computer. The ease of use, reasonable price and the performance give them the ideal solution for their desktop sound system. JOB was becoming the hot choice for computer sound peripherals.

Explosion of the demand, as well as the interest shown by hi-fi buffs and video companies rapidly pushed the initial team to its limits.
This is the reason why JOB finally decided to accept the purchase offer from the A.I.H.C. Group (Goldmund), in order to benefit of a real professional organization.
Attracted by the fast growing market of top quality sound for computers and high technology small home components, the Group companies joined their forces in R&D and JOB immediately started more ambitious projects aimed to those market niches.

Thanks to the assistance received from Goldmund in distribution as well as in production, the JOB products became a market reality.
Since that production is 100% subcontracted to larger industrial companies able to sustain the requested level of production.
Distribution and marketing have been taken in hand by Digital Audio in Switzerland and Job Electronics in the USA with a definite direction towards Direct Marketing on Internet.

And the Research cooperation with Goldmund allowed us in 1998 to announce the most accurate time-Linear D/A Converter in the industry, the JOB DA.
Since that time, JOB has been the active R&D company inside the A.I.H.C.Group. Our developments are now reaching their top level in the Goldmund most acclaimed Audio Amplifiers, with their hair-rising prices and sound quality, but also in the affordable JOB amplifiers like the new JOB 200 and 400, showing the incredible scalability of the JOB technology.

I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
But now my eyes see you.
The Book of Job 42:5