about us...

Ars Machinae [ars_mā-ki-nai] comes from Latin und means "the art of creating a machine."

The creative minds

by Ars Machinae

The award-winning designer team consists of Ralf Wölfel, mechanical engineering engineer and Alexandra Krug, designer. Together they create the products of the brand Ars Machinae. In the manufacture in Lichtenfels in Bavaria, Germany, high-quality turntables, tonearms and hi-fi furniture as well as accessories for analogue music enjoyment are fabricated in cooperation with competent suppliers from the region.

"For me, the sound experience of music reproduction is using a machine to reproduce all the emotions and art of the musicians stored on an analog vinyl record: A lively, high-resolution and full-bodied sound image consisting of nuanced gradations that fine spatial distinctions between sounds in the background, sounds in the foreground and the presence of the voices. When developing our products, I strive for nothing less than this perfection, which can only be achieved with the sum of all the optimized components of a turntable. In more than three decades of professional experience as a development engineer and mechanical designer, I have built up a deep understanding of the technical requirements for perfect record playing. As a team, we make your analogue dreams come true and enable you to enjoy music to the full."


Ralf Woelfel

Dipl. Ing. (FH) mechanical engineering

Alexandra Krug

Creative Director, CEO

As Creative Director, Alexandra is fully committed to all projects. She has a degree from Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Interior Design and several years of professional experience, during which she has successfully completed dozens of projects related to interior design, graphics and product design. The design of the M1 turntable for which she is responsible was awarded the European Design Award in the "Winner 2020" category.

Insight into the production

Manufacturing precision turntable components requires the same fundamentals as building a machine that can mill or lathe ultra-precisely. Our turntable components are also manufactured on modern, highly specialized CNC machine tools. This is what defines the quality of Ars Machinae products.

Musical Instrument manufacturing vs. turntable construction

Playback a record requires different physics than playing an classical musical instrument. The musical instrument generates tones with its vibration behavior. The builder of an instrument proves his talent through his feeling for the right vibrations of the hollow body. However, the builder of a recordplayer needs the ability to suppress precisely these vibrations so that the music playback is not distorted by the player. This physical basis also applies to a milling machine. The accuracy of the milling result is also determined by the rigidity and damping of the machine body. With the recordplayer, it is like this the sound that sounds clearer and finer.


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