A short history of Weiss Engineering Ltd.

Daniel Weiss joined the Studer - Revox Company in Switzerland as an electronics engineer in 1979. At Studer he worked in the digital audio lab for five years. His work included the design of a sampling frequency converter and the digital signal processing electronics for digital audio recorders.

In 1985 Daniel Weiss founded the company Weiss Engineering. From the very beginning our company concentrated on the design and manufacture of digital audio equipment for Mastering Studios. A Mastering Studios is the place where a recording gets its final touches for optimum artistic, musical and sonic quality.
The modular "102 Series" system was our first product line and was sold worldwide via the Harmonia Mundi Acustica Company in Germany. Even today this system is still up to date (24 Bit / 96kHz).

One of the largest setups of a 102 Series system was used at Sony Music in New York in the form of the IBIS digital mixing console shown below. Sony used it to mix classical music recordings.

Early in the nineties the Weiss "Gambit Series" was launched. It consists of stand-alone units like Equalizer, Dynamics Processor, De-Noiser / De-Clicker, A/D converter, D/A converter, Sampling Frequency Converter etc. The Gambit Series took ergonomics and sonic quality to a new level. 40 bit floating point processors and sampling rates of up to 96kHz are employed. Weiss Engineering is recognized as the leading company when it comes to signal processing for Mastering. Quite likely many of the CDs in your collection have been mastered using Weiss equipment.

The photo below shows the Mastering Studio “Mastering Mansion Madrid” using Weiss Gambit Series equipment; the white faceplate units on the left.

Starting in the year 2000 we entered the High-End Hi-Fi market with a new product line. With our expertise in the design of top quality audio equipment for the most discerning clientele, the Mastering Engineers, it seemed like a logical step to design equipment for you, the demanding audiophile.

The Medea D/A Converter and the Jason CD transport were the first units in that line and still are our flagship products. Later we introduced the DAC202 FireWire D/A Converter and the INT202 FireWire interface. Our latest product, the MAN301 Network Player, shows our commitment to cutting edge hardware / software technology for the future of audiophile audio playback.

The team at Weiss Engineering (chronological):

Daniel Weiss, President, graduated in 1979 with a BSEE from the HTL Rapperswil. Joined the Studer Revox company in 1979 as an Electronics Engineer. There he worked on analog anti-aliasing filters, test signal generators, sampling frequency converters and digital audio processing for a two channel DASH recorder. He left Studer in 1984 to start the Weiss Engineering company. In the early days of Weiss Engineering, Daniel Weiss had to do all himself, e.g. hardware design, PCB layout, host and DSP software design, manufacturing, testing etc. Today he is responsible for the hardware design (analog and digital) and all the marketing, PR, sales and administrative aspects of running a company.

Jakob Schiesser, Electronics Technician. Joined Weiss Engineering in November 1987. He is responsible for the mechanical and ergonomical engineering of our equipment (inside and outside), for the largest part of the host software (Rockwell 6501, Motorola 68HC16 , Motorola Coldfire processors), and for the PCB layouts. Jakob is also involved in various organizational activities, e.g. he wrote a parts inventory management program. He is also our Windows Server and network administrator.

Miriam Joos, electronics manufacturing coworker. Miriam takes care of our cable assembly and various other soldering duties.

Marcel Vogt, Electronics Technician. Joined Weiss Engineering in September 1996 as an electronics technician after having spent several years with the renowned FM company, a Swiss amplifier manufacturer. He is responsible for manufacturing management, quality control, final inspection of all equipment leaving the factory and repair service.

Uli Franke, Electronics Engineer, graduated in 2004 from the ETH in Zurich with an MS degree in Electrical Engineering. Uli joined Weiss Engineering in July 2004 and is working in controller software, DSP, PC, MAC and iPad software development.

Rolf Anderegg, Electronics Engineer, graduated in 2004 from the ETH in Zurich with an MS degree in Electrical Engineering. Rolf joined Weiss Engineering in August 2007 and is working in DSP software and PC software development.

Barbara Elsener, Secretary. Barbara joined Weiss Engineering in March 2008 and is doing all shipping duties and some of the administrative work.

Samuel Groner, Electronics Engineer, graduated in 2006 from the ETH in Zurich with an MS degree in computer science and 2010 from the ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts) with an MA degree in recording engineering. Samuel joined Weiss Engineering in March 2006 and mainly contributes to analogue hardware design. Besides his engagement at Weiss Engineering he also freelances as classical recording producer/recording engineer.

Joschka Weiss, electronics manufacturing coworker. Joschka joined Weiss Engineering in 2012 and takes care of soldering and assembling our products. He is also working in the testing department.

Claude Gugolz, electronics manufacturing coworker. Claude joined Weiss Engineering in 2012 and takes care of soldering and assembling our products. He also maintains our parts stocking department and manufacturing planning.