Who made the Ambeo Plus?

So who really designed the new Ambeo Plus? The long development of the original (now the Max) took place under a dedicated Ambeo department within Sennheiser, with voicing input from key staff at Neumann.

This new product is labelled “Designed in Germany, built in China”, and the packaging says it is made by “Sennheiser Consumer Hearing Gmbh”, with an address which is inside Sennheiser’s German building. The soundbar is branded to Sennheiser, or rather the revised ‘Sennheiser Hearing’ under which Sennheiser consumer products are being marketed since those consumer divisions were sold last year to Sonova, a Swiss group of companies that specialises in hearing care.

So this new Ambeo Plus soundbar is really from Sonova, branded as Sennheiser Hearing, formerly the consumer division of the German Sennheiser. We’ve been trying to get more detailed information on this arrangement ever the purchase, and under the guise of working out who had actually designed this new soundbar, we tried again. Our guess, really, was that Sonoma itself actually had nothing to do with this product’s development. The information we got back was mildly obfuscatory but did provide some clarity. To allow you a full interpretation, here’s their full reply as sent to us.

When you put all that together, the answer is that the new bar was developed by the existing Sennheiser consumer team, which is still working in the Sennheiser building, although now formally employed by Sonoma. And it sounds like Sonoma is just letting them get on with things for now. Which we’d rate as entirely good news, at least while the division’s results remain positive. “The behind-the-scenes movements of the businesses is not public facing, but by law we are required to cite all the appropriate origins and business units as they exist at the time of publishing & production.

“The AMBEO Soundbar team moved across with all other Sennheiser consumer employees, including our product managers and developers. “We still have our consumer hearing (audiophile headphones, true wireless headphones, soundbars, etc) head office in the Sennheiser Wedemark offices (as Sonova Consumer Hearing) and are licensing the AMBEO technology (it’s a sub brand) from Sennheiser as we are the Brand name Sennheiser.

“It’s complicated but there is no compromise on the products – this was in development well before the move to Sonova.

“Sonova’s role in future Sennheiser soundbar development is to let the AMBEO soundbar team do their thing as they always have.

“With regard to a smaller soundbar, we’re always looking at the market and evaluating opportunities to use the AMBEO technology, but do not typically comment on speculative products.”