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Which country produces the greatest speakers?

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carewser

carewser

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France

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I tend to think the Focal Grande Utopia is the world's greatest speaker system but Focal is just one company
 

richard12511

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The greatest wines come from France, the greatest beers from Belgium. The source of the greatest speakers, however, is clearly a matter for debate.

Belgium definitely makes the best beers. Westvleteran 12, Rochefort 10 :D. Never knew beers could taste that could.

Although, I really love the Dogfish head 120 minute IPA similarly. It only shows it's face here in Texas every 5 years or so :(.
 

Vintage57

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GD Fan

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Belgium definitely makes the best beers. Westvleteran 12, Rochefort 10 :D. Never knew beers could taste that could.

Although, I really love the Dogfish head 120 minute IPA similarly. It only shows it's face here in Texas every 5 years or so :(.
Well, Westy 12 vs Dogfish 120 is about as far apart as one could get, no? Though I do admire your range!
 

TimF

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China makes 25 million autos a year, and the next biggest producer is the USA at 8.8 million. There are likely audio speakers in each auto produced. I doubt China is importing speakers for autos. I'd say the China makes BY FAR the greatest number of audio speakers in the world by a least a factor of 3 over any other country, if not a factor of five. And I bet a lot of those speakers are pretty solid and will do what they are intended to do over the life of the product, i.e., the life of the automobile, radio, or cell phone. That makes them great: they do their job over as intended. China is consumer goods and more and more electronics. Get used to it. About 17 million hearing aids are sold each year which I imagine dwarfs the entire audiophile speaker market. I could be wrong. The audiophile speaker market could be bigger than I think. How many audio speakers that cost more than $1,000 each are sold each year world-wide? And don't try to tell me that audiophile isn't highly equated with expensive products. We all know that is the game.
 
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valerianf

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China is without competitor for the mass market production. You send to them the design and they manufacture it to the specifications for a very low cost.
But on the side of innovation and high end products, I do not even think about them before a long time.
May be in one generation (25 years).
 
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Scgorg

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Finland has always struck me as quite remarkable on a per capita basis:
Genelec
Gradient
Amphion
Not necessarily because they have a ton of high-performance speaker brands, but because of how innovative a lot of what comes from these few companies is. That especially goes for gradient.
The Danes, as already mentioned in this thread, should not be underestimated either (although it pains me to say this as a Norwegian).
Germany has a lot of smaller brands with a somewhat cult-like following (ME geithain, KS digital) as well as the venerable Neumann/Klein and hummel. They probably can't compete on the "per capita" criteria, though.
 

VintageFlanker

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Elipson Legacy 3230

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These would probably sound like garbage as (m)any Elipson for the last 20 years, since Son-Vidéo owns the brand.

Would be glad to be proved wrong, but we don't have any objective data to do so.

So here is the situation in France:

- Focal produces great speakers in house. Most sound good and measure good.
- Triangle are heavily colored (most measurements show bad fidelity except the Australe EZ) and only Signature and Magellan range are assembled in France.
- Pretty much the same for Cabasse these days.
- JMR promesses great objective performance but we lack any tier-party measurements to validate this.
- Atohm seems to produce textbook engineering drivers (at least individually measured) but same as JMR: we need verification.
 
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carewser

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The Danes, as already mentioned in this thread, should not be underestimated either (although it pains me to say this as a Norwegian)

How do you think the Swedes feel with ~ twice the population of any other Scandinavian country yet zero notable loudspeaker manufacturers
 

Scgorg

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How do you think the Swedes feel with ~ twice the population of any other Scandinavian country yet zero notable loudspeaker manufacturers
I would hope they feel terrible and lesser compared to their neighbours, of course!
There's a reason a Swede is always the butt of the joke in Denmark and Norway.
 

RolandRa

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Oh and Chario. There are a ton of italian driver manufacturers too for some reason. RCF, Sica, B&C, FaitalPro.
And ESB (very well regarded in the mid '80), Opera, Giussani Research, Rosso Fiorentino.

On the driver manufacturers side add Ciare & 18 Sound (now both owned by B&C) and Lavoce Italiana.

Attached: ESB 7/05 & 7/06
 

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