It all started with my son and I wanting to build something together. Anything would have done, really, that was interesting and complicated enough to keep us on our toes for a while. It turned out to be loudspeakers, something I knew little about, which is always a key attribute for any project I chose: Pick something interesting that you are new to, learn everything about it you can, get good at it, and build something different.
So first we sifted through all the different ways to reproduce sound. Crossovers, multi-way speakers, bass reflex systems and finally we got to an art upheld by few: True full range speakers.
I had listened to a friends Lowther´s a while back and I had been sold on the idea that sound coming from one single source actually created a three dimensional sound space that was very coherent and pleasant. I guess we have evolved in a world were as both predators and prey it was paramount to localize sound as a tool of survival and the human ear relies on several cues to do truly amazing things. But more to that later. To cut things short, we wanted great stereo imaging and knew that subwoofers, mids, and tweeters would through our ears of, so we had decided on a full range system.
So we started to test different drivers and it was clear that this is a world of tradeoffs. Membranes that are large enough for the basses, break up at the high frequencies leading to distortion, and vice versa, a membrane small and agile enough to get to the highest range was not going to kick it in the basses. Or was it? And that´s how I met Bjørn.
Bjørn Johannesen, you see, has been sitting on something remarkable that was getting more and more traction in the do-it-yourself community: The quarter wave resonator. Or in particular, his TABAQ design that uniquely extends the resonant chamber to create something amazing: a bass extension well below the driver´s own capability, with a flat response down to 45Hz and then an extremely gradual drop off. None of the dreaded one-tone-bass, you see, that makes bass reflex speakers punchy in the low end but without accurately reproducing the music, but instead emphasizing that one frequency it was designed to resonate at.
So we decided to build according to TABAQ and Bjørn in his kind, intelligent and low key Scandinavian way, helped us understand the principles to take us there. He is one of few who masters the art of numerically simulating quarter wave loud speakers using Martin J. King´s remarkable MathCad tools (visit http://www.quarter-wave.com if you want to go deep)
The outcome was simply amazing. Music has always been something I have been passionate about and seeing so much of it come from such a small driver really surprised me. Songs and recordings I had listened many times on very expensive B&W speakers that I own, all of a sudden had a new clarity and spatial congruity with full musicality down to below 40Hz gave me back the goose bumps that for me are always the emotional pinnacle of listening pleasure.
Since my previous startup was by then already running almost on its own and I was looking for a new challenge I asked Bjørn if we would consider becoming a partner in a NewCorp and he immediately said yes. And so a few trips to my lawyer later, we had embarked on this fun adventure that is unraveling here.
We gave us the name Kvart&Bølge which means Quarter&Wave in Danish, et voila a year of design, trial and error, prototyping, simulation, testing and improving here we are: Our first product, the Kvart&Bølge Sound Sommeliers, audiophile, quarter wave, floor standing speaker. Something that was as big as it needed to be to sound as good as it does and actually really sleek, uninvasive and small. Bjørn calls this the SAF or spouse acceptance factor, and there is no question that our SAF shoots through the roof.