Interesting Book: Danish Loudspeakers - 100 years - 1915 to 2015

Gardenstater

https://audioxpress.com/files/attachment/2683

I found this while trying to research the history of the Peerless company and the Peerless soft textile dome tweeter. Reading it now. Little bit that's interesting here so far (p 21):

"The soft (textile) dome was invented in
the US by the audio industry pioneer, William Hecht, in 1964. Various types of domes
existed prior to his patent, but Hecht was
the one who really nailed it when he carefully described the non-rigid behaviour of
the textile dome in his patent. This invention
marks a turning point towards High Fidelity
(Hi-Fi) in high frequency transducers; by
the end of 1970s the soft textile dome
completely outperformed the conventional
paper cone tweeter design. Hecht had a
US patent for the concept, but Europe was
not restricted with a patent, which many
European speaker companies utilised.
A German manufacturer of soft parts
for loudspeakers, Dr. Kurt Müller, started
manufacturing textile domes in the late
1960s and one of the first soft dome
tweeters introduced to the market in 1968
was the SEAS H87 tweeter. This 38 mm (1½
inch) dome tweeter designed by the two
SEAS engineers Ragnar Lian and Mogens
Hvass became hugely successful and sold
in more than 1.5 million units over the years
1968-1981. Mogens Hvass had worked
for Nørgaard Madsen for 20 years, while
Ragnar Lian started at SEAS in 1963."

mhardy6647

Neat-o. Thanks for sharing that link.
A smattering of (larger and smaller) Danish companies have been responsible for some very fine drivers and loudspeaker systems.

The Peerless KO10DT silk dome tweeter (well known to vintage Polk Audio fanboys) and the Dynaco A-25 (and its kin) fairly leap to mind!

bang & olufsen have produced their share of fine loudspeakers over they years.
EDIT: and if 'we' expand the scope to Scandinavian loudspeakers, it gets even better.
Tandberg and Sonab (Stig Carlsson) are then in scope.

Gardenstater

p. 23:

"Peerless in the 1960s & 1970s
In the 1960s Peerless launched a line of kits
for the DIY market, which sat the standard
for quality kits. SEAS picked up the idea
and also launched a line of kits. This business area made Peerless and SEAS visible
in the consumer market and was part of a
successful branding strategy.
In 1966 Peerless faced a necessary and
problematic change of generation when
one of the founders, Einar Skjold Petersen
retired. Peerless was a well-established
and financially solid company. During this
phase, Peerless’ other founder, T.M. Larsen
stayed with the company for a couple of
years as General Manager and a 20 %
shareholder (the remaining 80 % shares
was purchased by American EAD). A couple
of years later EAD purchased the shares
of T.M. Larsen and became sole owner of
Peerless. Peerless was able to recover.
In 1968 Per Staal became General
Manager of Peerless and the company
expanded heavily. Loudspeaker production
was established in Boston (1973), USA
(named PAL, Peerless Audio Leominster).
Peerless also became a shareholder in KLH,
Boston, USA.
In August 1971 the Peerless factory
in Gladsaxe (Copenhagen) was expanded
with 3500 m2
of new buildings, with plans of
expanding further over the next 5-6 years to
11,000 m2
. The factory was organized with
raw materials entering one end (Peerless
casted their own magnets, pressed their
own steel chassis, wound their own voice
coils and formed their own paper cones and
textile spiders) and at the other end of the
factory 250 meter down the road, out came
the finished loudspeakers.
In Germany, Peerless purchased Mikrophonenbau (this became Peerless-MB),
which manufactured loudspeakers,
microphones and headphones. In the 1970s
Peerless purchased the cabinet maker
Unison in Horsens (Denmark) and a factory
in Bretton (France) was purchased to jump
into the French market.
At this point (1976) Peerless was one
of the largest manufacturers of speakers
in Europe, maybe one of the largest in the
world when it came to Hi-Fi products, with
a capacity to make 30,000 speakers per
day. Danish (and Norwegian) transducers
were - and in many people’s opinion still are
– leaders in the global market. If you were
looking for a high quality driver at a good
price (some would even say the best driver
at any given price) you would buy it from
the businesses in Denmark and Norway.
Peerless was among the first loudspeaker companies in the world to change
the former (bobbin) of the voice coil from
paper to aluminium. With its many advantages, aluminium remained a standard
recipe for many speaker manufacturers all
the way through the 1980s and well into
the 1990s, when glassfiber and polyimide
(Kapton) materials were explored as viable
alternatives.
Peerless continued to expand internationally. In 1977 they entered a joint venture
with capital from Denmark and India, and
Peerless of India was founded in Bombay
(today Mumbai), production started in 1978.
Peerless’ facilities in Søborg (Copenhagen) were expanded several times.
Worldwide Peerless had more than 1000
employees. The American mother company,
EAD added system manufacturers like
Infinity to the business portfolio. The entire
loudspeaker division was managed from
Søborg without much interception from the
Americans."

Gardenstater

p. 27:

"The business at Peerless went fairly
smooth through the 1970s, but during
the 1980s, Peerless faces trouble. The
company at this time was still a highly vertically integrated manufacturer of speakers,
including for example the stamping of steel
parts for magnet systems and sheet-steel
frames. Vertical integration can be great, in
particular if all divisions manage to progress
and keep up with the state-of-art within
each area.
Unfortunately for Peerless, the loudspeaker industry in Japan, Taiwan and China
was very competitive and making parts inhouse was not always a profitable solution.
In such a situation, vertical integration can
create a lack of flexibility and for example
when cast magnesium (later cast aluminium)
frames became more fashionable among
customers, Peerless stayed with their sheetsteel frames. Peerless had to reduce their
activities and close down factories. They
moved to Karlslunde in 1983.
The same year, 1983, Knud Thorborg
became the official R&D Manager at
Peerless. He had already unofficially
been in that role for more than a decade.
Peerless of India became independent from
the Danish company in 1983. For a while
Peerless of India was actually the major
shareholder of Peerless in Denmark (sold
by the Americans), but they never managed
to get control of the company due to some
paperwork trouble. The employees at
Peerless Denmark were not exactly helpful
in this process.
Eventually Peerless Denmark ended up
without a Board of Directors and the company was run by the middle management,
led by Sales Manager, Olsen.
In 1986 Peerless was sold to JME (Jysk
Murer Entreprise) and with financial support
Peerless regained some of its strength (JME
was a construction company – but a former
manager of Peerless, Corny Petersen, was
involved in JME). JME went bankrupt in
1990 and Peerless again had to find new
investors, and after various owners ended
up in the hands of Vifa-Speak."

Gardenstater

p. 97:

"The founder of PointSource Acoustics
Carsten Tinggaard studied Engineering at
the University of Southern Denmark (SDU)
and later at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) between 1992-2000. In 1998
he finished his Bachelor of Acoustic Engineering at SDU, and thereafter he applied
for a job in Mexico with the intensions of
becoming an underwater acoustic engineer.
Life turned out differently and instead he
travelled to Spain where he worked with
speakers and acoustics solutions. In 1999
he returned to Denmark and took the 8
Master´s degree courses in acoustics available at DTU while working as a freelance
acoustic consultant.
Education and theories alone are not
sufficient knowledge to generate great
sound solutions, so between 2000 and
2009 Carsten Tinggaard gained the practical core expertise that forms the basis of
PointSource Acoustics’ expertise today.
In 2000, he landed a job at Peerless in
Karlslunde, Denmark working as an Acoustic Engineer. Those were the great years,
when the factory used its own tools, treated
the raw materials, and manufactured all
speaker parts in-house including the final
assembled drivers. Numerous acoustical
experiments were carried out by Carsten
Tinggaard, leading to hard-core theoretical
discussions with the very experienced
grand old man within in the loudspeaker
industry, Knud Thorborg.
In 2003 Carsten Tinggaard became the
Peerless’ Product Manager under Danish
Sound Technology (DST) where he teamed
up with Gert Christensen, today Product
Manager at M&K Sound. Together Knud
Thorborg, Carsten Tinggaard, and Gert
Christensen designed many drivers for the
audio industry. All three played an important
role in the Danish loudspeaker industry
throughout those years.
In 2005, the company changed ownership and name to Tymphany and between
2005 and 2009 it endured more changes.
The factory in Karlslunde was shut down.
Production was moved partially to Jutland
and the rest to China where Tymphany
built a state-of-the-art manufacturing site
in Panyu, Guangdong. A new R&D site
was also established in Taastrup (20 km
from Karlslunde) where Carsten Tinggaard
became Chief Engineer, responsible for
the development of all three Danish loudspeaker brands: Peerless DK, Vifa DK, and
Scan-Speak.
The R&D site in Taastrup had grown
to include a strong team of more than 20
people, covering R&D, QA, and Sales. But
due to the global financial crisis end 2008,
Tymphany decided to shut down the R&D
site early 2009. "

Gardenstater

p. 110:

"Moving in with Vifa
In the late 1990s the company’s name (Scan-Speak) was
changed to Vifa/Scan-Speak to signal the
mutual ownership and close relationship
between the two brands.
In 2000 Peerless was acquired and
merged into Vifa/Scan-Speak. The resulting
combined company changed its name to
Danish Sound Technology (D-S-T). That
same year Scan-Speak moved from its own
location into a new extension of the Vifa
factory making the merger complete."

"American adventure
In 2005 D-S-T was acquired by the Silicon
Valley start-up company Tymphany, which
had invented a special type of subwoofer.
Tymphany was in need of manufacturing
facilities and an established customer base.
During this time Scan-Speak operated
as an autonomous division within Tymphany.
Later, as the years went by Tymphany’s
business grew and its own manufacturing
was moved out of Videbæk to China.
Illuminator line
For many years Scan-Speak’s research
engineers had worked on developing a
new under-hung motor design that showed
promising results. It was decided to use
this design, Symmetrical Drive magnet
system SD-3, for a new product line that
was launched in 2008/2009. This Illuminator
line became Scan-Speak’s new top product
line.
The Illuminator woofers offered a unique
construction and its design differed greatly
from how woofers traditionally had been
build. In addition to the SD-3 the design
included several new technologies including
a special lightweight paper sandwich cone
that with its stiffness and inner damping
provided a very precise and distortion free
sound reproduction.
The 2008 financial crisis was hard on
the loudspeaker industry and Tymphany’s
operations suffered dramatically. As a result
Scan-Speak was split off and sold to the
local Danish management in April 2009. At
this time Scan-Speak had 35 employees
and had spread its activities to a larger
part of the old factory where the Tymphany
manufacturing previously had been done."

aprazer402

A big thank you here too! I've known of this publication and had been looking for a copy. Very beautifully designed and appears to be very thorough. Can't wait to start reading!

Tony M

Wow!
What goes on behind the scenes.

All these years I've been seeing in Parts Express catalogues certain "Buyout specials" that included the names mentioned in that article. I almost bought some of the tweeters and speakers mentioned!

Also, the few men mentioned who had a passion, like Sandy gross, to keep doing what they do was GREAT to read about.

Thanks for posting this great read!

ken brydson

Ltannan reported

xschop

Nostalgia and insight. Still reading..Good find.

skrol

Nice find