Some companies take pride in knowing exactly what their customers ought to want, right down to the last EQ frequency. Soundtracs takes pride in not knowing.

'We aren't musicians,' says Marketing Manager John Carroll with relish. 'Other firms slag us off for not being directly involved in studio recording, but that's part of our policy.

'After all, if you think you know what you want and then you push that onto your customers, you'll end up only pleasing a few people who think like you.

'We ask customers and clients and distributors what is needed and then we build it. And that means we have a range of products that suit the market rather than ourselves.'

It's a policy that seems to work. In its 13-year history the company has consistently defied the doom-mongers to build a solid, successful business which has survived the switchback twists and turns of this notoriously fickle industry.

Soundtracs has just gone public, after being valued at an impressive £4 million, a move which is both prestigious and unusual for anybody in the musical market.

MD Todd Wells started his career as an electrical engineer working in radar, heating... you name it. Then in 1972, he started a company called Soundout to manufacture consoles for the then-beginning disco field.

Suddenly, the great disco boom hit and while everybody was donning their white suit and perfecting their Bee Gees squeak, Soundout found itself one of a very few manufacturers supplying this huge market. Needless to say, faster than a John Travolta twirl they were turning out volumes of gear and success was assured.

But as fast as the boom had hit, it receded again, leaving many companies high and dry with thousands of pounds worth of unsold equipment. Not Soundout, though, it had changed track — also changing its name to Soundtracs along the way — and by the time 'disco' was a dirty word and 'punk' was the new thing, Soundtracs was ready.

Having been clued-up enough to anticipate the demise of its original market, it slotted neatly into another one. In the mid-Seventies it was almost impossible to go into a pub or club without having your eardrums sandblasted by one kilowatt or so of noise emanating from a dodgy band. In those heady days, there were a lot of groups who played live, and they all had their own PA and backline. And almost all had a 12:2 or thereabouts to make sure that the lead singer's yelling sounded at least vaguely like vocals.

So while the live bands boom was on, the company diversified into backline amplification going by the name of Frunt, which sold reasonably well, particularly among bassists, because it was reliable, loud and above all very, very clean-sounding.

The range included a small PA mixer which went down very well indeed, and sparked off the idea of selling this in its own right under the Soundtracs name. And so as the mixer range became established, the Frunt line was relegated to the shadows and eventually wound down entirely so that they could concentrate on what had become a very viable range of mixing consoles.

Yet again, though, the times changed. Venues closed, bands started to hire PA more and more and live sound mixing became a far smaller market.

And yet again Soundtracs was ready. Having spotted another potential avenue, it cottoned on to the possibilities of the emerging home recording field. By 1981 it was producing only mixing desks, as indeed has been the case ever since.

'We've survived by keeping our ears to the ground and by making sure we know what the market is doing all the time' says Carroll. 'We research very thoroughly into what is happening, both in terms of what distributors and clients say and in terms of how our competitors are doing. We get some stick for it, but we insist on getting figures on everybody.

'The thing is, we aren't the sort of company who go all out to be the most innovative, most expensive or most high-tech outfit in the world. We're just not interested in that end of things. If you want to build a top-quality digital fully automated console, for instance, you would have to spend an absolute fortune on R&D and then price it in the quarter of a million pounds plus bracket. If you then find — as a lot of firms are about to — that there is suddenly a lot of competition for that very limited market you've got problems. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few big names go down in the near future because of that sort of strategy.

'Our policy has always been to provide the right product at the right time for a particular area and it's been very successful. Our R&D department does come up with fantastic ideas, some stuff which is truly ahead of its time and often quite practical.

'But if we can't produce it at a sensible price we won't bother, we'd rather shelve it until the price of the components comes down or whatever. If we were AMS or Fairlight or someone, we'd go for that really innovative product, spend a lot of time and money working the bugs out of it and then sell it at a huge price. But that's not our style, that is not the way we operate.'

The way it does operate is to take a basic range — at present around 10 models with probably as many variations on each one — and sell it at a reasonable price. For instance, its brand new automated console, the CP6800, is going for less than £25,000. For a full-function mixing desk containing programmable digital routing, video synchronisation facilities and disk storage, that is very well-priced indeed.

The rest of the range, from the basic PA/Home Recording T series through the new fully modular FM/FMX and the interesting MIDI mixers, falls roughly into line with that idea. None are overpriced. All are solid and reliable (thanks to the company's self-contained quality control department and its enforced 120-hour 'burn-in' period before despatch.)

It's probably a good thing that Soundtracs' reliability record is good, as some of their consoles would have a long way to go to get factory serviced. Thousands of miles in fact, for many of them which have gone to the numerous far-flung dealers and distributors overseas.

There's no secret about the fact that Britain isn't the only market for the firm; only about 15 per cent of all sales are from here. The rest of the production goes to America, China, Africa, India, Japan... you name it.

And the relationships they have built up with their dealers all around the world are important, not just for sales but also for feedback on products.

'We soon hear if people want a special feature on a desk, or if they don't like something.' Carroll says. 'Our customers play a big part in the R&D process. Our British agents, for instance, Don Larking's new company, Studio Equipment Distribution, are always listened to with particular interest because the British studio scene is ahead of the rest of the world and they give us tips we're able to use to keep up.

'Likewise, our overseas people like Tom Lee in Hong Kong and MCI Intertek in the States have always had interesting things to say.'

Foreign sales aren't exactly novel for the company, though.

'We were one of the first British music industry companies to recognise the potential of the overseas market,' reminisces Carroll. 'There was US Marshall WFM and a couple of others at first going to trade shows abroad. And through that we made a lot of contacts and plenty of sales.

'When your output is split over a large number of countries it's a lot steadier, it gives you a very solid base.'

On that base, they've built a solid success story. Suddenly, the company that some pundits had written off as merely middle-market fodder has shown itself to be one of the most stable and financially viable institutions the industry's got.

'When the top end of the market starts to suffer' avers Carroll, 'We'll still be here. It's not going to get any easier in the studio equipment market, but we're going to keep watching out for gaps in the market and filling them. I've got complete faith in this company.'