Who might be responsible for dusting the bones of said 5000 wedges didn't net any replies so we migrated from this measurement room directly to production. This covers two floors. Immediate impressions included the fact that manufacturing at Geithain includes their own drivers. Enclosure crafting (not design) is left to a neighboring cabinet shop. Also the tweeters with their in-house written specifications are outsourced but all other transducers fall under the aegis of Ricardo Muhr. As Joachim Kiesler stressed, Muhr's job requires exemplary skills. Just observing the gluing of sensitive membranes, dust covers, voice coil former, spider and surround told me that this was no work for the messy nor those cursed with coarse motor mechanics. The later photo shows the ingredients for a 15-incher.

The extent of ME Geithain's vertical integration could be seen in the foam-surround pressing machine. Though Geithain does rely today also on the more robust and then outsourced rubber surrounds for certain applications, they still generally favor scissor-cut and hand-layered foam which they thermically shape and bond. Despite such focus on labor-intensive hand crafting, these folks don't forget to also see the bigger picture. This is perhaps exemplified by the following contraptions. Those aren't newfangled drive units but pump motors for infant respirators. Speaker design spin-offs can be more varied than imagined.

Final assembly with driver and network fittings occurs elsewhere. In this sector we encountered our first lady employee. Doris Härtel was working up a €1,400/pr entry-level MO-1 with active electronics. Together with two colleagues, Mrs. Härtel oversees production of Geithain's 'smaller' models. This includes the 1-meter tall 3-way ME-150 floorstander that's quite popular with hifi fans. The photo shows the filter network of the passive version. To guarantee proper continuity, solder joints and sequencing of the various caps, coils and resistors, all finalized circuit boards undergo automated verification in a custom machine.

One floor lower we ran into Wolfgang Pötzsch responsible for production of the firm's 'big' models together with two others. He also seemed adamant not to be photographed. His colleagues not visible in the image had to grab his ankles to keep Pötzsch in place just long enough for that one elusive shot. The front baffle in the photo belongs to the ca. €10,000/pr RL-901 model. This area doesn't just produce the big boys, it's also repair central for oldies. Pötzsch made that point with BR-25 drivers who, after 25-year service, had been sent in for a surround replacement.

To wrap our visit, we relaxed in the 70 square-meter listening room where despite liquid refreshments, the acoustics seemed rather dry. Geithain tuned theirs for 0.3 second decays where many sparsely furnished living rooms routinely sport 1-second echoes, with 0.5 to 0.7 viewed ideally balanced for pleasure listening. Besides client auditions, this room of course also serves the Geithain crew for work. The 4-strong development team includes Markus Schmidt who after serving drinks also conducted our demonstration by way of their self-developed automation system. This allows on-the-fly model swaps at perfectly equalized playback levels. I'll refrain from extensive commentary on this brief occasion except to say that in matters of dynamics and low-bass control, it wasn't just the €40,000 ME 800K which seriously impressed by energizing more than just the ears on violent kettle drum whacks.

But this caused no brutal acoustic knock-outs nor did it prevent a perfectly civilized closing chat with team boss Herr Kiesler. I was curious whether he differentiates between pro and home speaker design during the design phase which he tersely negated. He turned rather more loquacious when asked what in his view are the most vital prerequisites for a credible studio or home speaker:


"Important are timbral neutrality, proper sorting and a correct sense of distance. One solution is to avoid widely spaced drivers which are common in multi-way systems (Geithain pursues the point-source ideal with its coaxial driver montages - Ed.). Further, controlled dispersion characteristics are often undervalued. In the 2 to 4kHz range, the human ear registers direct sounds ca. 2.5dB louder than reflected sounds. A proper speaker has to account for that. Each of our models with its own inherent ideal listening distance is specifically tuned to not excessively beam in the presence region. Otherwise the 2-4kHz window is emphasized which neither serves proper tone color nor subjective distance. Instead it would cause hyper presence and an unduly upfront perspective." Last but not least, I meant to query Geithain's chef on his favored listening fare for critical auditions but a CD in plain view on his desk explained all. Ciao Geithain!
redaktion @ fairaudio.de