Auzentech Grabs a New Partner

As Creative learned many years ago, a company can not live by selling sound cards alone.  While Auzentech made a pretty big splash by offering pretty nice C-Media based cards (four years ago I would have laughed at that sentiment), it is a market that is not exactly growing, and has competition from the likes of Creative and other seasoned players.  While I have enjoyed testing Auzentech cards down the years, I have been worried about how long they could sustain their business model.  Designing, manufacturing, and distributing sound cards is not the way to make untold millions.  So it seems that Auzentech is more than aware of their potential predicament and they are creating partnerships with other manufacturers that may not have access to the North American market.

The latest addition to Auzentech’s lineup come from their new partnership with SIMS Audio.  The parent company of SIMS has been in business since 1958 producing musical instruments, and for several years SIMS Audio has been producing high end pro-audio products for the PC.  Auzentech of course does not design or produce these products, but since the parent company of Auzentech USA is also Korean, it is nice to see a bit of cooperation between manufacturers to offer users unique and interesting products that were previously unavailable here in North America.  For the time being Auzentech will act as the distributor for SIMS Audio products, and from what I see they may have a nice little market for them.


The big product that will be shortly introduced is a professional level multi-function sound editing card.  The Quartet is a 4 x 4 channel I/O professional grade soundcard aimed at the home studio.  It appears to have some very nice features, but again these are wholy professional in their nature and will not appeal to the casual gamer or audio enthusiast, and likely the price of this card will keep it out of the cases of those aforementioned users.  But for those who do professional level of recording and mixing, this could very well be an interesting product for them to consider.

The second most interesting products are their professional grade monitor speakers from Infrasonic, which is another member of the SIMS Corporation.  No, these are not speakers that attach to your CRT/LCD monitor, but rather speakers that are found in actual recording studios that are aimed at overall accuracy rather than consumer grade stuff which focuses mainly on bass.  The Blow series will likely not blow you out of the water, but for those again working on some serious recording, mixing, and editing, these monitor speakers could be just what the Dr. ordered.  They promise to be quite accurate, but they are not designed to delve into the deep bass depths.  In fact, these speakers are rated to go to 60 Hz, rather than the standard 20 Hz that humans can hear at the lowest.


There are a couple of odds and ends scattered about that recording artists might find interesting, but it is good to see Auzentech branch out a bit with the products that they are offering.  The choice of SIMS products seems a solid one, and hopefully these products live up to their hype and specifications.