Scandinavian Audio Research Debuts By Wes Phillips September 23, 2007 — There's a new drive-unit manufacturing company on the block, but it's really just the same old guys who brought you VIFA, ScanSpeak, and DST—the original pros from Dover, in other words.

Scandinavian Audio Research (ScAR) has announced a product line to be called SB Acoustics, which will consist of a 1" soft-dome tweeter, 4" midrange, 5" midwoofer, 6" midwoofer, 10" woofer, 12" woofer, and 15" woofer. All are newly developed from the drawing board up and feature a proprietary cone mixture called Norecx, as well as new chassis designs and a fully optimized, low-distortion magnet system. All can be optimized to clients' needs.

So who are these guys? Lars Goller (former directing engineer at Danish Sound Technology), Ulrik Schmidt (former ScanSpeak senior engineer), Frank Neilsen (former DST senior mechanical engineer), Benny Frank Pedersen (former Scanspeak engineer), Alan Hydel Jensen (former ScanSpeak engineer), Torben Sondergaard (former ScanSpeak president), and David A. Stephens (former vice-president of VIFA).

Some of you may recognize this as the brain trust from GamuT Audio. Indeed, I asked Stephens if ScAR was going to spell the end of GamuT. "Certainly not!" he said. "Lars and I are still dedicated to the system approach to hi-fi—to controlling the signal from its recovery to the time it leaves the drivers, but we felt a real void in our lives after Tymphany's merger with DST. Deep down in our hearts, we're old-school OEM guys and we missed that vigorous collaboration with manufacturers and the thrill of shepherding a product from conception to production. We're problem solvers and, God help us, we actually thrive on deadlines, so we felt it was time to take all of the talent and experience we collectively have and find new challenges."

Manufacturers who can supply such challenges can reach Stephens at david@sbacostics.com or (262) 784-7852. The new drivers will be on display at CES 2008.