Company visits
The SoundStage! Network began in 1995. By 1998, traveling to visit hi-fi companies had become a regular occurrence for me. At first, I toured companies close to my home in Ottawa, Canada—those located in the Toronto and Montreal metropolitan areas, mostly. By 2000, I was traveling to companies in the United States and Europe as well.
Since there was a finite number of hi-fi companies to visit, I would make repeat trips to some of these brands. By about 2010, I had made it a goal to visit, on average, at least one company per month, whether or not it was a repeat trip. Whenever possible, I’d make it a point to schedule a trip to a company I hadn’t yet visited. Today, I think I’ve traveled to more hi-fi companies than any other hi-fi writer in the world.
When I first started traveling to see these companies, it was to create factory-tour articles for our readers to learn from or simply enjoy. But as I visited more and more companies, I realized that I was learning a lot about how products get designed and manufactured. Although I wasn’t an expert, by about 2010, I was knowledgeable enough to be able to assess the design and engineering capabilities of the companies I visited based on what I’d seen at other companies that I knew were particularly accomplished.
The information I gleaned during these visits trickled into my product reviewing, because when companies sent me review products that exhibited something unique or intriguing, I’d often look into visiting them just to see with my own eyes how they operated. That way, I could develop a better understanding of how they created the product under review. In turn, this provided more information that often found its way into my reviews and feature articles.
This phenomenon just repeated itself with Arendal Sound’s 1528 Tower 8 loudspeaker, which was officially released on October 1 as part of the six-speaker 1528 series, the company’s latest lineup, and, as you’ll read below, its most advanced.
Early Arendal
Arendal Sound began in 2015 in Arendal, Norway. But it wasn’t until 2023, when they sent us a pair of 1723 Tower S loudspeakers to review, that we took much notice of them. Philip Beaudette wrote that review, which was published in February. But I was the one who initially received the speakers, photographed them, and measured one of the samples.
What intrigued me most about Arendal at that time was that they were selling direct to consumers all over the world—i.e., with no distributors or dealers—a business model of increasing importance, particularly for customers in North America, where good distributors and dealers are few and far between. Arendal still uses that approach. But with its sturdy cabinet, the Tower S also looked impressive to me, and, according to Philip, the pair sounded good as well.
In the end, we concluded that the Tower S offers good value for money. That’s likely due to Arendal’s consumer-direct business model, which cuts out the middlemen, but also because it is made in China (though designed in Norway), which, as everyone knows, can cut costs significantly. But because it broke no new ground in terms of performance or technology, the Tower S didn’t make me want to jump on a plane to find out more about what Arendal Sound is doing.
Initial impressions and surprises . . .
The 1528 Tower 8 is a different story. I received a pair of early-production samples at the beginning of September. According to CEO Jan Ove Lassesen and chief designer Thomas Gunvaldsen, what I received is representative of what consumers can purchase, except for some slight cosmetic issues that still needed to be ironed out. Because the cabinet, drivers, and crossover—and hence the performance, Thomas assured me—wouldn’t change, I felt comfortable accepting the pair and assessing them as review samples.
When the speakers were delivered, I was taken aback by the size of the boxes and the total weight of the shipment—over 400 pounds, including the pallet the boxes were strapped to. Unboxed, each Tower 8 weighs 175 pounds and stands nearly 5′ tall with its aluminum supports and optional rubber feet in place. From the photos I’d seen earlier, I never expected the speaker to be that big and heavy, which brings me to my first point about the Tower 8.
The term game changer is overused in hi-fi, since something significant enough to warrant that description comes along only rarely. But in terms of how companies sell speakers, the Tower 8 could change the game. I’ve never seen a speaker of such size and weight being sold online the way Arendal is here—shipping, taxes, and duties included. I can’t help but think that if Arendal pulls off selling the Tower 8 this way, they might truly have changed the game, because their success could get other manufacturers to consider the possibility of selling big and heavy products directly to consumers.
There were more surprises, including the cabinet. It’s made from HDF, like the Tower S, but has a feeling of such solidity, you could mistake it for metal. The vertical and horizontal curvatures of the front baffle aren’t just visually striking. The vertical curvature also provides a functional benefit: it allows for proper pointing of the six drivers toward the listening position. Those six drivers are all-new designs for this series, and are unlike those I’ve seen from any manufacturer. That wasn’t the case with the Tower S, whose drivers looked to me like they were sourced from a typical OEM supplier.
The drivers also seem to exhibit advanced tech. For example, the tweeter, which is nestled in an oval-shaped waveguide, has a dome made from an alloy of lithium and magnesium. I haven’t seen that combination used for hi-fi before. The midrange has a cone made from a combination of carbon and graphene, which I have seen used, but only in much more expensive speakers. The midrange also has a permanently affixed front grille that is aesthetically nice, but I want to learn more about it to see if it has an acoustical purpose. The four woofers each have a cone made from aluminum, which isn’t unusual, but with a ridged pattern to increase stiffness—that, I haven’t seen before. I’ve also looked at Arendal-supplied images of the drivers’ baskets and motors, and they’re not like any drivers I’ve seen before, either. These appear to be bespoke driver designs—and quite advanced ones at that—which puts this speaker and the others in the 1528 series (they all share the same tech) a huge leap beyond what the company previously offered.
There are other nice touches, such as the metal plate on the back that houses both the super-high-quality binding posts and a jumper section that allows tweaking of mid- and high-frequency output; the large rubber-like feet that screw into the well-finished aluminum supports; the thoughtfulness of the packaging, which has a lot of foam to keep each speaker safe and secure during shipping, but is also designed to allow the speaker to be removed fairly easily (I emphasize fairly because moving a large, 175-pound speaker can only be so easy); and even the inclusion of floor sliders, which go under the feet to make the Tower 8 much easier to move around. All told, from head to toe, everything about the Tower 8 points to a well-thought-out, highly advanced speaker design.
. . . And a shock
The biggest surprise came when I learned the price, which I hadn’t known when I received the speakers. After I’d unboxed the Tower 8s and looked closely at them, I figured a pair would cost around $15,000 in the United States, which I thought would be a very good deal. If this speaker went through a distributor and a dealer, I could see the price ballooning to $25,000/pair. That wouldn’t be a screaming bargain, but it wouldn’t be outlandish given the physical impressiveness of the speaker. Then Jan dropped the bomb on me via email: $9500/pair in the United States, including shipping, taxes, duties, a 60-day audition period, and a ten-year warranty! I was shocked.
The speaker is made in China, mind you. But still, $9500 seemed like such a steal that, as I was reading Jan’s email, my eyebrows rose, my hands went down to the seat cushion on my chair, I propped myself up straight, and I realized that I might have to travel 3500 miles to Norway and visit this company so I could find out how they could possibly supply such a large, tech-heavy speaker for such a low price.
But I have a confession to make: I estimated the price based solely on what I was seeing—I hadn’t yet listened to the pair. Now that I have listened, I know my early reaction was on the right track—sonically, there’s much to admire here. However, not all my listening is done, so I’ll hold my thoughts on the Tower 8’s performance for my full review.
Coming soon
That trip to Arendal hasn’t happened yet—I’m scheduled to fly to Norway with two members of our video team on November 9. As I’m writing this, that’s still about three weeks away, and almost two weeks after this article is published. You can be assured that I’ll be quizzing Jan, Thomas, and whoever else is around to suss out how the Tower 8 and the rest of the 1528 series of speakers came to be—which is something I know that many of our readers and viewers want to know about. And as the case has been for a couple of decades now, much of that information is likely to wind up in my review of the Tower 8, which is scheduled to run on this site on December 1.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstage.com
