Chapter II: Beginning

Music in the Blood – The Emotional Birth of Audio Physic

“Music is my life” – this sentence still accompanies Wilhelm Hegener to this day. And anyone who knows him immediately senses: it is not a figure of speech. It is a deepest truth.

As a child, he would sit transfixed in front of the family stereo system, listening to “Diskothek im WDR” on headphones – so his parents wouldn’t hear the sonic intoxication he was immersing himself in. Music was never just entertainment. It was magic, depth, a window into another world. The first hi-fi devices found their way into the house through his parents’ electronics shop – and with them came a fire that never went out.

His first personal tape recorder, a UHER. Then a WEGA home system. Every saved Mark was invested in speakers, amplifiers, turntables – and in countless vinyl records, lovingly chosen, patiently searched for, sometimes fought for over long distances. Sound was not merely something he heard. Sound was home.

In the 1970s, music led him to a discotheque in Korbach, Hesse – the “Schinderhannes.” There, he met someone who felt the same way: Joachim Gerhard. Conversations became friendship, shared listening experiences became a deep connection.

Both built their own loudspeakers, passionately debating cables, drivers, and tone colors – often late into the night.

Joachim Gerhard frequently visited the Hi-Fi studio in Bestwig, where Wilhelm Hegener was setting up a high-end listening room. Due to the room’s mediocre acoustics, sound-enhancing structural modifications were made – based on advice from a professor at the Meschede University of Applied Sciences after measuring the demo room. This is where Hegener and Gerhard first learned how strongly room acoustics influence musical reproduction – a realization that would become significant later. Their fascination for everything related to impressive sound never let them go.

Their hi-fi equipment continued to grow in sophistication. They put all kinds of loudspeaker technologies under the microscope, as well as nearly every turntable of renown, cartridges, transistor and tube amplifiers, audio cables of every type – even turntable racks were compared in the Hegener Hi-Fi Studio. Only what proved to be the very best found a place in their own music systems.

In the end, this escalation led Wilhelm Hegener back to the essential. His experiences and insights flowed directly into how he advised his hi-fi customers.

The story of Audio Physic