FSI 2008

Conventional audio marketing wisdom has it that any new company with a single product, selling at a high price, will have a really rough time establishing distribution and picking up dealers. But this apparently did not deter Kim Neeper Rasmussen. The Neeper Perfection One is a two-and-a-half way floorstander of modest size, with a 1.5" ScanSpeak ring-radiator tweeter and two 5.5" custom ScanSpeak midrange/bass units, each speaker weighing 30kg (66 lbs). A major feature of the design is that the cabinet walls are all non-parallel to each other, an approach to resonance-control that Rasmussen considers to be vastly superior to the use of damping materials. The speakers are made in Denmark, and are priced at $20,000/pair.

Kim Rasmussen had dealt with the room's upper-bass bloat by arranging the Neeper speakers to straddle a corner and fire into the room's diagonal. They sounded quite terrific: a big, open sound, dynamic, neutral tonality, and bass that makes you suspect that there's a subwoofer hidden somewhere. Rasmussen has been successful in transcending conventional audio marketing wisdom: the Perfection One has picked up distribution in 17 countries.