Symmetrical moving coils, magnetic bearings and Panzerholz: turntables and cartridges built in Erlangen since 1978.

Peter Suchy left Prague for West Germany in 1969, the year after the Prague Spring. He was a trained nuclear physicist and, by What Hi-Fi?'s account, had played in a rock band in Prague; in Erlangen he worked in the power-plant division of Siemens before going out on his own. Clearaudio was founded in 1978, and the company dates its first product to that year: a moving-coil cartridge whose coils and magnets were arranged symmetrically about the cantilever's pivot, patented, and fitted with an ultralight boron cantilever. What Hi-Fi?'s history places the symmetrical system in 1980 and records that the company's official debut was a pair of loudspeakers, the Delta and Sigma stand-mounts. In the same period Suchy worked with Dr. Ernst Weinz on the Paroc stylus, which the magazine credits as the first to use a boron cantilever, and produced a parabolic stylus called the Trygon. Suchy's own summary of the founding patent, given decades later, was that it was about balance: electrical, magnetic and mechanical.

The company settled in Erlangen's Meilwald, a nature reserve on the edge of the city near the Fraunhofer and Max Planck institutes and the university, in a former Siemens building where X-ray film had been made until the early 1980s; What Hi-Fi? dates the move to 1983. In 1984 Clearaudio claimed the world's smallest high-end phono preamplifier, and in 1985 it patented the Optimal Connection System for audio cables. Around 1989, as the compact disc arrived, it started the clearaudio Music label to press vinyl, and it still issues audiophile recordings and reissues of classical discs originally made for Deutsche Grammophon. Robert Suchy, who had begun as a precision-mechanics apprentice, joined officially in 1991, and by the company's own account Clearaudio took on the tangential-tonearm work of the American maker Souther around that time, refining the arms that became the Statement TT1. In 1993 came the Reference, the first Clearaudio turntable: a V-shaped chassis in acrylic with brass parts, later stainless steel, a separate mass-loaded motor housing and an 80 mm acrylic platter when contemporaries were near 25 mm. Later Master Reference versions added three motors and the Master TQI tonearm.

The Goldfinger of 2003 put a moving-coil generator in a body of 14-karat gold, and the Statement, launched in the middle of the decade, was a turntable of about 350 kilograms without tonearm that drove its platter through magnets and leveled itself with a pendulum. In 2005 Peter Suchy stepped back from daily operations and handed management to his children, Veronika, Patrick and Robert, and within months the company had moved into a larger facility; Enjoy the Music's visit in February 2006 found a machining room making parts to a thousandth of an inch. The Ceramic Magnetic Bearing, which carries the platter on opposing magnets, was patented in the same years, in 2006 by one account and 2008 by another, and became standard in the top series. The Innovation of 2009, a chassis of Panzerholz laminated between aluminum plates with the magnetic bearing and Optical Speed Control, won a Red Dot design award and a HiFi-Stars award; The Absolute Sound reviewed the Innovation Wood at $10,000 in 2010 and gave it a Golden Ear, Jim Hannon writing that it raised the bar on what a $10,000 turntable can do.

The Concept, a deck shipped with counterweight, tracking force and anti-skating set at the factory, was reviewed by Michael Fremer in Stereophile in June 2011 at $1,400 with its Verify arm; he wrote that there was no reason a buyer could not be playing records within a few minutes of opening the box. The Ovation, the smallest deck with the magnetic bearing, the optical speed control and the Panzerholz sandwich, was The Absolute Sound's Turntable of the Year for 2011 and won a Red Dot in 2012, and that year both the Ovation at $4,300 and the Goldfinger Statement at $14,999 were runners-up for Stereophile's Analog Source Component of the Year. The Master Innovation of November 2013 stacked two Innovation chassis and borrowed the Statement's magnetic drive. The Absolute Phono concept of 2014 put a preamplifier inside the headshell. In January 2016 the Statement V2 arrived with microprocessor speed control, an improved gyroscopic bearing over a 95-kilogram pendulum and a POM platter in place of acrylic, and in August the Innovation Basic opened the Innovation line at its lowest price.

Clearaudio turned forty in 2018. Fidelity gave Peter Suchy its Lifetime Achievement Award that year, the company employed around 50 people, and its German company report recorded turntable sales rising from about 2,000 to about 20,000 a year over the previous decade and exports to more than 80 countries. The Reference Jubilee, a limited run of 250 numbered turntables reviving the triangular shape of the 1993 Reference in Panzerholz and aluminum, was shown at High End Munich in May 2018; Robert Suchy said the original shape was kept and everything else was new. The Jubilee MM and MC cartridges in Panzerholz bodies, the V2 moving-magnet range and the Smart Power battery supplies followed in June 2019, and the Basic V2 and Balance V2 phono stages in March 2020. The Reference Jubilee went on sale in April 2021; Stereophile's specifications box listed it at $30,000 with the Universal 9-inch tonearm. For its 45th anniversary in the spring of 2023 the company skipped its usual Munich exhibit and held a party for its distributors at the factory, which Michael Fremer attended and wrote up for The Absolute Sound.

In 2024 the Concept Signature introduced Tacho Speed Control, and a US-only Signature edition followed in March; Jonathan Valin reviewed the Goldfinger Statement V2.1, the current flagship cartridge with the new Prime Line diamond, at $17,500 and called it his current favorite moving coil. What Hi-Fi?'s visit in May 2025 found Robert Suchy as chief executive and Veronika Suchy as chief operating officer, almost all components made on site, and cartridges assembled by hand under a microscope at two or three a day. The company says it sells in more than 80 countries, keeps spare parts for at least ten years after a product's launch, generates more than 70 percent of its daily electricity from its own photovoltaic system and has built products for other brands, among them McIntosh and Marantz. The family's credo is printed on its own pages: take the best, make it better, then it is just good enough. Peter Suchy, now retired, was still visiting the Erlangen headquarters regularly at the time of his award.