ACI Story

• Chapter 1: ACI History

• Chapter 2: Where it all happens

• Chapter 3: ACI's R&D

ACI was founded in 1977 by Mike Dzurko in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In the early years ACI focused on custom building and experimentation. Literally hundreds of designs were built and tested against the reference of live music. Designs were continually being refined and optimized.

ACI then focused on taking the most successful designs and turning them into speaker kits that our more "hands on" customers would assemble for themselves. Gradually, ACI began custom assembling the speaker kits for clients. Both the kits and assembled models were sold consumer-direct to customers all over the world. During these years, ACI also contracted to develop and build systems for other audio companies. Over time, we found that the real savings was in selling direct and we could actually offer customers better value with finished speaker systems.

In 1995 ACI saw the potential of the Internet as a way to work even more directly with our customers and early in 1996 ACI’s first website went on-line. At the time there were less than 10,000 websites in the entire world!

The rapid development of home theater led to a critical decision for ACI: Should we remain a small manufacturer of high end two-channel systems or should we embrace the many challenges of home theater and expand our line to include powered subwoofers, center channels and other multi-channel specific speakers?

Thankfully we made the right choice . . . and today ACI continues its adherence to our high end roots of quality while expanding our efforts into the growing home theater and multi-channel applications.

Previous Corporate Headquarters:

Though ACI’s humble beginnings in 1977 can be traced to Mike Dzurko’s garage, ACI’s headquarters from 1987 until very recently were housed in Wisconsin’s second oldest stone church. The converted church, (circa 1867), housed our corporate offices and final test and assembly facilities. A move to a brand new facility took place the summer of 2007 and more details will soon be added.  From this base of operations, we are able to conceive of new designs, create working prototypes and engage in the final engineering of finished designs. ACI works with several high-end cabinet makers and sources the finest internal "guts" from primarily the U.S. and Europe. Crossover design, manufacture, and final QC testing is done in house.

R&D Labs:

Each of the core members of the ACI design team have their own laboratory and listening room setups.  These setups include a variety of computer based test and measurement systems. Most importantly, good rooms for serious listening. More on this in the following section.

ACI Showroom:

Please go to Showroom for detail

Two essential types of R&D are done at ACI: The first flows from the need to create a wholly new design, such as the Sapphire XL. Development time from concept to delivery of first product was over 16 months!  In the case of the XL, the initial concept was proposed by a member of our design team who fell head over heals in love with the ScanSpeak Revelator 5 1/4" midbass driver. He argued that this should be the basis for our next generation Sapphire.  This little gem of a driver is extremely expensive . . . generally used in speakers starting at around $3000 pr. In the end, we decided it was worth the cost. Another member of the team had been playing with a new cabinet design that was very effective at controlling resonance, was very attractive, and seemed reasonably cost-effective to build, (more on that later).  Months went into developing the crossover that would allow this speaker to reach it's true potential. 

For beta testing, we worked with an old friend in the recording industry. Tom has done everything from design recording consoles for Sony, to doing custom $50,000 studio speaker installs, to being the lead engineer recording some of today's best artists. Tom used the prototype XLs in his studio and hauled them around to other studios in his area. The instructions were to "throw everything you can at them". As one engineer said, "Man, I hear EVERYTHING in the mix but it's all in proper proportion!". As a side benefit, despite pounding the three initial pair of prototypes, they turned out to be simply bulletproof!  The little XL was publicly unveiled at the Las Vegas CES in early January 2005. Those at the show raved about how natural and real the XL sounded . . .our system was one of the least expensive at the Alexis Hotel, but many attendees commented it was one of the most natural sounding. In the months since we found that those compound side angles were a lot tougher to do in production than in prototype. It took several months to finally create the production fixtures that would allow the cabinet makers to build these speakers cost effectively.  

The second very important application of R&D is the ongoing refinement of existing designs. While not as glamorous as working on new designs, this continuing R&D is critical to building products of truly enduring value and musicality. The artisanship and quality of ACI speakers make this investment into continued improvement one that feels good to us and is appreciated by our customers. ACI products are built to last as well as continually providing a consistent level of musical performance throughout their lifetime of use.

How a New Product is Developed:

Let’s take a quick look at what goes into to a new loudspeaker design...A new design’s concept comes first. Quite simply, what is it and what does it do? A typical 2-way monitor appears quite simple on the surface...just two drivers a crossover and a box...what could be easier?

Well, if you only want to build run-of-the-mill, me-too type of speaker system then it’s not very complicated. At ACI we refuse to build anything that’s run of the mill or simply "just good enough". Our finished designs must readily and honestly compare with products costing two or three times their price or they will never bear the ACI badge. In defining our sample 2 way, we must know how large it will be, how much it will weigh, and how loudly it will play over how wide a bandwidth. From this most basic thumbnail, we can begin the process of selecting drivers that we know function well together. Since drivers and enclosures interact, the box is an essential part of our design process. Knowing and understanding how these interactions will affect the quality of musical playback is something that often requires the use of sophisticated measuring and computer aided simulation.

For this reason, ACI owns some of the very best and most advanced electro-acoustic software and hardware available. Some names that might be familiar to you include: LEAP, MLSSA, CLIO, and TrueAudio. Proper use of this type of software allows us to avoid serious and obvious mismatches in the design process and can sometimes be confirmatory of proper design decisions previously made.

However, computers and high tech software can never be used as a final arbiter of a product’s worth or musicality. This judgment is the sole province of the mind / ear connection. This is why ACI maintains a number of Reference Rooms where we can listen to and judge prototypes, finished designs, and modifications of existing products. The rooms contain a variety of treatments to allow us the most complete and accurate impression of the speaker that we are evaluating. Of course, we use a variety of systems and rooms so that we can be sure our designs will work in the "real world". These rooms are crucial to ACI’s design process. Like testing a car on a racetrack, nothing can take the place of the human ear. It’s what ACI is all about.

Appearance is not an afterthought. The physical appearance of the speaker is firmly connected to the performance of the speaker. A perfect example is the wide variety of finishes we offer. With all of the technical advancements in audio and video, most loudspeakers are still based on a 6 sided enclosure. Fortunately, these 6 sided boxes can be quite attractive and when built to furniture quality standards like we do here at ACI, a loudspeaker can be a welcome addition to the most tasteful and well-decorated home.

ACI, Sound that Satisfies...Since 1977