25 years of prior precision CNC machining experience are another part of the recipe. Ditto 18-coat varnish polished by 800-grit sand paper; or a carbonized veneer called Tiger Bamboo. Hookup wiring is Van den Hul silver/copper. Since enjoying music playback of fine sonics in the home is very much a lifestyle—and luxury at that—today's speakers are styled to suit. Whilst the special green of the Frida version below may not set a non-British heart racing, it could become German postal yellow or taxi ivory, Hermes orange or anything with a colour code SV-Audio can duplicate. That these folks are ambitious, Munich showgoers could track in the Danish Audio Excellence exhibit of Vitus electronics, ZenSati cables and SV-Audio's new €130K/pr Menja which combines a passive floorstander with a separate active woofer tower. The former is a ported 3-way with four 7" woofers of its own crossing in at 450Hz. The latter is a 900-watt bass system with three sealed and three rear-vented 7" drivers each crossing in at 100Hz. If you're a loudspeaker, going lower and louder as rooms scale up always demands more cone surface and cubic volume. Industrialists in McMansions have different needs than regular apartment dwellers of means. The penthouse posse should want compact yet capable, stylish yet technically uncompromised. That's despite the more-for-less crowd which polices these corridors with their sharp value stick. They point at the right 106kg Tekton Ulfberht tower whose 21 drivers include dual 15" woofers but only wants $10K/pr where Gro gets—feign outrage—nearly twice more. But today's audience politely waves them off. Posh flat dwellers have different ideas.

On their behalf and my own, today we go Danish dandies. Let's leave the mummy coffins to the hifi cemeteries of broken marriages and police-calling neighbours. Today should be about eye and ear candy; plus domestic bliss. It certainly was synchronicity. After approaching SV-Audio with a review inquiry, Lærke Vestskov answered, "thank you for reaching out. I have actually been in contact with Bill Armstrong recently and asked him if he could put me in touch with you – so it can't be a coincidence." Seeing I hadn't heard from Bill whose email account provider had shut down just then, wasn't it? I prefer synchronicity. It's a word Carl Gustav Jung coined though his native German makes it Synchronizität. Wikipedia defines it as events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related yet lack a discoverable causal connection. But that disregards the realm of thoughts and how different people can pick up on the same idea. Patent offices the world over know this only too well. Being on the same wavelength is how we casually call it. Physical proximity has nothing to do with it. Apparently even sharing the same time needn't have as my grandma's foresight showed.

To return to wavelengths of 20Hz-20kHz which are audible to everyone present not just mind readers and intuitives—but unlike inanimate microphones or spectrum analyzers—many buyers of upscale hifi seek more than just full-bandwidth¹ sound. They hunt for an emotional response. SV-Audio's website makes particular mention of it as underlying rationale for being in the speaker biz. "We founded Storgaard & Vestskov to bring emotions back to music. High-end audio must be heard and felt to be believed." Now the crew which claims that measurements can quantify everything in hifi leaves our crib. The night shift which accords measurements their rightful place but demands more enters. Observing Denmark's most famous son Hamlet, even Polonius suspected "though this be madness, yet there is method in it." It's where beyond target curves² and dispersion patterns, minimal group delay and inert cabinetry, speaker design includes artistic aspects. Do we prefer van Gogh or Vermeer, van Dyke or Velásquez? Now that's the existential question. We must find a speaker designer whose notions of emotional expressiveness and sonic artistry coincide with ours. If that's of no concern, why not shop purely on frequency response, bandwidth, price, size and looks? On the latter, we've already seen the Tiger Bamboo veneer over HDF; black or silver T6-grade aluminium baffles with matching stands; and four examples of custom automotive lacquer. Time to go sonic; and perhaps emo.

¹ Whilst the classic definition thereof is 20Hz bass, we can probably agree that 27Hz for a compact tower makes the grade. Just so, another distinction remains. How much cone surface applies to the job? A 15" woofer reproducing 30Hz registers differently than twin 5" woofers. Each has a signature and to some ears and environments, the small mid/woofer is preferred.

² SV-Audio's in-house engineer and crossover specialist is Jens Posselt with 45 years in Danish speaker-design experience. Co-founder Kim Storgaard was previously head of marketing at Viking Sound Wave, a speaker brand by his wife Marianne Aaby. Her €5.8K/pr Disa monitor above already used the same 38mm ring radiator tweeter and polypropylene mid/woofer, the same 12dB/.oct. Linkwitz/Riley slopes and T.I.M. reduction circuits for lower transient intermodulation distortion. SV-Audio CEO Casper Vestskov Poulsen is the industrial designer and fabricator of all milled parts. The spiralling grooves in the Frida stand column are an unusually intricate detail thereof. Ditto for the 3D-sculpted logo on the terminal dress plate.