SPL Performer m1000 Monoblock Amplifiers

Sound Performance Lab (SPL) is based in Niederkrüchten, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and has manufactured professional and home audio gear since 1983. With a deep background in studio mastering, SPL founder and chief designer Wolfgang Neumann got the idea of starting his own company while managing a recording studio in rural Germany in the late 1970s. In those days, the US dollar was valued at roughly 3.5 times the deutschmark, and importing US-made studio gear wasn’t cheap. This led Neumann to begin the tinkering that ultimately convinced him he could design and build better-sounding products and sell them at prices significantly below those of imported US equivalents. By 1983, he’d begun selling his products under the SPL brand, but struggled with distribution until, in 1985, he met Hermann Gier.At the time, Gier, who is now CEO of SPL, was taking bass-guitar lessons from a fellow who was endorsing a brand of speakers marketed by SPL’s distributor. Intrigued by Neumann’s ability to conceptualize from scratch and bring to market outstanding electronic components, Gier asked him to build him a bass preamplifier. And so began their partnership.