Audio memories: When we took Czech hi-fi to Warsaw

When I think today about my beginnings in hi-fi distribution, one memory always comes back to me. The year was 1999, and an idea was born: to present the best of Czech hi-fi on the Polish market.

Several Czech manufacturers joined the project back then. RI Audio from Hranice in Moravia with its superb electronics, the Shan company, which built excellent loudspeakers, and of course Pavel Dudek of DP Audio – a man I always respected not only as an exceptional designer, but as a modest and honest person.

An expedition to the Sobieski hotel

We decided to exhibit together at the show in Warsaw's Sobieski hotel. Today that may sound simple, but at the time it was a proper expedition. We had acoustic panels made, brought the equipment and the endless carrying began. The exhibition room was on the fourth floor. The lifts were out of order, the hotel was full of people, and we carried everything up the stairs with our own hands. By evening we were tired, but we knew a long session of setting up the system still lay ahead.

What are we actually trying to prove here?

Then I walked down the corridor, looked at the names of the world brands around us, and I admit that for a moment I lost my nerve. I said to myself: what are we actually trying to prove here? Will Czech products hold their own beside the greatest names in the world?

We worked deep into the night. But it was not only about work. It was the collaboration of people who believed in their equipment and understood it. We all knew that if we managed to prepare the listening properly, the result could surprise.

And it did.

Visitors kept coming back

From the very first day, visitors began arriving who then returned again and again. Many said they had not heard sound like that anywhere else at the show. Some claimed that our room was among the very best the exhibition had to offer.

It was a moment you do not forget.

That was when I first realised that Czech hi-fi has something to offer the world.

From first steps to distribution

Those were the very first, tentative steps. In the years that followed, a small company gradually grew into the distributor of many brands. Companies such as Cabasse, Sonus Faber, Primare, Pro-Ject, Cardas, Isotek, REL and others came along. But it was precisely that show in Warsaw that was one of the moments when it all began.

There is one memory, though, that I will never forget.

Like Danish electronics

After about two years of working on the Polish market, Audio magazine wrote that Czech electronics were beginning to be perceived much like Danish ones. At that time Denmark was the symbol of world-class sound – Copland, Bang & Olufsen, Dynaudio, Jamo, Scan-Speak and a whole range of other manufacturers set the global trends.

For a small Czech company trying to present the work of our designers abroad, that was an enormous reward. Not because it was praise for my own work. Above all because we had managed to show that equipment deserving international respect was being created in the Czech Republic too.

Moments like that stay with you.

And that is exactly why, all these years later, I return to them so gladly.