y The instructions read like something out of an old Ian Fleming novel. Fly to Frankfurt, meet up with a guy called Ben, catch a train and head to a beautiful location about an hour from the French border. The only difference being, there was no James Bond, Q or M... but instead the two most well-known letters in the DJ world, H and K. For those of you who don't know your HK Audio history, the story began 40 years ago when two brothers, Hans and Lothar Stamer, began manufacturing their own speaker cabinets in a small shop in Germany.
Word spread quickly, and so did their reputation, and since then HK Audio has grown into the company we know today. Their passion for creating the perfect sound is widely acknowledged, and they offer a wide range of products to suit a massive variety of different applications. To be honest, when I was offered this gig I was gob smacked. I wrote in a recent review for the ELEMENTS Gala system that you never forget your first HK Audio system and that, I later found out, was one of the reasons why I was invited on this trip.
I was heading out to see where my speakers were made! What's not to love about that? The trip started pretty early for me with a 7am flight out of Heathrow. Luckily I hadn't worked the night before so was able to get enough hours of sleep in beforehand.
Fortunately the flight to Germany is relatively short. You take off, level out and then land, so you don't arrive with that horrible feeling you get after sitting on a plane for a few hours. After navigating around Frankfurt airport for a while and exceeding 10,000 steps just to get to the train station, I met up with Ben who works for JHS, HK Audio's distributor in the UK, who was also coming on the tour. We grabbed some train tickets and between us, despite getting a dodgy set of instructions from the guy who sold us the tickets, managed to end up on the right platform for our train to Saint Wendel.
It's important to mention at this point that I have never been to Germany before and I wasn't sure what to expect. I just assumed that as the home of iconic brands like BMW and Audi, it would be an industrial, manufacturing metropolis, littered with huge warehouses and billowing chimneys. What I discovered was that it's actually an incredibly beautiful country. On our way to Saint Wendel, we passed through some gorgeous scenery that reminded me of my home town in Lancashire.
The view was a neverending, gorgeous rolling landscape of hills, trees, lakes, rivers and small picturesque towns and villages. Upon arriving in Saint Wendel, we were met by Torsten and Elisa who head up International Sales and Marketing for Music and Sales, the distribution arm of the Stamer Group, named after the two brothers who founded the company back in 1979. After a hearty lunch, our first destination was the huge demo room, well, warehouse, next door.
The demo area is identifiable only by a pair of enormous truss towers outside, and I'll be honest, for me, it was like walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory! Inside was a full complement of HK Audio's range of products and a chap called Michael Latterner, Educational Manager at HK Audio. On first meeting Michael you very quickly get the feeling that he is someone who lives and breathes HK, has a passion for the brand and loves his job. His enthusiasm during the demonstration was undoubtedly infectious, and it was also clear that he knew his stuff.
We started with the Lucas Nano which is the only HK- designed product that isn't manufactured in-house. For me, the Nano has always been a wolf in sheep's clothing because it is a tiny, tiny system yet can deliver a full and well-rounded sound at a volume that doesn't seem possible. It is an incredibly discreet PA system perfect for wedding ceremonies, speeches, pub quizzes and so on, with huge connectivity potential. Put two systems together, and you can easily play out to a crowd of 100- 150 people and fit it all in the boot of a Ford Fiesta!
After the Nano, we moved on to the Lucas 2K which is the perfect sound system for a mobile DJ. It's a threebox system comprising a pair of mid-high satellite speakers and a choice of a 15" or 18" subwoofer. The HK Lucas 2K has a very aggressive look about it so you "I'll be honest, it was like walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory! " can tell right from the start that it means business and the sound quality certainly backs that up.
The next product we looked at was the Linear 3, which is something I want to review for a future issue of Pro Mobile (take note Eddie!). Michael demoed both the L3 112 and 115 active full-range cabinets that were teamed up with a pair of Linear 15" and 18" subwoofers. Now, when the demo started, I wrongly assumed that the incredible sound and thunderous low end was coming from what I could physically see with my eyes when the actual reality was that I was listening to just the fullrange units on their own.
I actually couldn't believe my ears! When the L Subs were added, the depth of sound was taken to a whole new level. It's a serious system indeed, certainly one you should consider if you regularly play to audiences of at least 300-500. To round off this first hectic day, Michael and Torsten set up their ‘Turkish Sound System’ , which com- The next day, again, started pretty early for me at around 6:30am.
I took the opportunity to head out and go for a walk around the local area on a gorgeous, crisp, spring morning. Right next to the hotel is a magnificent church, the Basilica of St. Wendelin who the town is named after. Saint Wendel itself becomes a mecca for those making the pilgrimage to the area in October to celebrate St.
Wendel's day and the town certainly does not disappoint with a plethora of bars, cafes, restaurants and nearby villages to explore. After breakfast, we made our way back to the Music and Sales offices where we met up with Holger Kartes, Chief Technical Officer and Chief Operations Officer, Florian Legrum who were going to look after us on the factory tour. Our first stop was the in-house metal workshop where speaker grilles, amplifier casings and other items are fabricated.
To be honest, I expected to see a large, noisy production line with huge sheets of metal being fed in at one end and ready-stamped pieces falling out at the other, but this was indeed not the case. Instead, I found several small areas where skilled workers used 21st-century technology together with old-school manual processes to do their work. The surprises kept on coming. Every single amplifier and power module is hand-assembled by an on-site team who take individual components from a shelf and solder them onto the circuit boards.
These are then soak-tested over a period of time "skilled workers used 21st-century technology together with old-school manual processes to do their work " prised of two pairs of L Sub 4000s, an 18" twin-vented bandpass sub - woofer rated at around 1200W and a pair of L3 mid/high tops. Torsten told us that the folk in the nearby offices are used to regular earth-shaking moments like this resulting in what I can only describe as involuntary bowel movements!
After a short moment to recompose ourselves and re-align our natural bodily processes, we made our way to the hotel. I took this moment to reflect on what I had seen and heard during the afternoon. While I do get to play with various speakers when I review them for Pro Mobile, it's rare that I get the opportunity to hear multiple systems side-by-side and really give them the beans. My first day in Saint Wendel ended with Ben and I building on our bro - mance by sharing a candlelit dinner at a local gourmet burger restaurant.
This, to be honest, was pretty spectacular, much like everything else I had seen during the day. New Accessory of the Year 2019 “I'm a Dj and my idea was to have the wizard as an add on package, now people are booking the wizard and booking the Dj as an extra add on. Absolutely love the Selfie Wizard.” JO - Ireland before going anywhere near a speaker cabinet. The text on the back plate of these modules is printed individually by hand, using traditional silk-screen methods; this is the level of quality you can expect from this leading brand.
It was at this point Holger gave us a brief history of the building we were in. Originally built in the 1930s, it is one of several, visually similar, structures in the local area. The Unified Army occupied these concrete buildings during the Second World War where they were used as a field hospital for both sides. They are incredible, over-engineered, substantial buildings and that makes them an ideal location for the next part of our tour, the anechoic chamber.
An anechoic chamber is an essential part of any speaker development process. The one at HK wasn't a big room internally, but the walls were about a metre thick and lined with a non-reflective sponge-like material. This allows you to listen to the speaker in its purest form, with no reflection of sound, completely isolated from the outside world. Response measurements can be carried out here on speakers at a huge variety of angles without even having to enter the room.
Along the corridor was a room described as the ‘torture chamber’ . Once the nervous laughter from the group had dissipated, I learned that this was a special room dedicated to testing above and beyond what the speaker would usually face when deployed in the real world. This process of testing a speaker to destruction ensures that HK Audio users worldwide can always work with confidence. It doesn't end there.
The basement also features an RF- shielded room, a Faraday cage. This allows amplifier and power modules to be tested adequately in a shielded environment without any kind of influences from electromagnetic and other RF radiation. Even the cardboard cartons the speakers are delivered in are tested to ensure HK Audio products will make it to your door undamaged once they have been through the hands of Destructor the delivery driver. Test speakers are snuggly packed into shipping boxes and then summarily dropped like a hot potato.
Any dings found on the cabinet are unacceptable, and even if they come out visually unscathed, the units are tested again to check they still work after gravity has done its worse. It was now time to see where the final product is made and assembled, so we headed out to the main factory. When we got there, I discovered that it was a LOT smaller than I expected and incredibly clean. I have worked in several warehouse-based jobs in the past and, in comparison, it was spotless.
It seems that the care and attention given to the products manufactured on the inside also extends to the outside. "An anechoic chamber is an essential part of any speaker development process " Our first stop was right at the beginning of the cabinet building process where the large sheets of plywood and MDF are stored.
Plywood, due to its very nature, varies in appearance from one piece to the next, and a grading system is used to specify aspects of the finished look. HK Audio use the best grade possible to build their cabinets which means that the materials used will be consistent, which is incredibly important not only for aesthetics but also for reliability. Once the sheets have been cut down, they are placed into huge CNC machines for the first of only two automated processes I witnessed during the whole tour.
The different parts of the cabinet then have dowels placed into them for rigidity before being hand-assembled and glued, a process that even manually takes less than 10- 15 seconds. Any excess glue is removed, again by hand, and the cabinets are then sent off to the finishing room to be sanded. Seeing these speakers being built, by hand, by skilled workers, made me feel like every single cabinet had a soul, like it had been given life. It was a very odd feeling, but the closest analogy I can come up with is when kids put a heart into a soft toy at the Build A Bear Workshop (Mums and Dads, you know precisely what I’m talking about here!).
The care and attention given to each cabinet, at every step of the build, even before any components get screwed into place, is astounding. Once built, the cabinets make their way to the only remaining automated process, the spraying room where each speaker has multiple layers of paint applied by a pair of robotic arms that ensure each one is given a consistent finish before being left to dry. Heavy-duty ventilation systems keep the sawdust so well contained that none of it manages to find its way onto the freshlypainted wood.
The cabinets then make their way onto a line where the components and damping material are added to make the finished product before it receives its final testing, visual checks and, of course, a serial number. The whole process from start to finish is very efficient, and it's very eco-friendly too. Any wood left over is recycled and used to heat the factory during the cold winter months. Packaging is also kept to a minimum as HK have their own carton-making machine that produces boxes that are designed to fit the products perfectly.
This offers four significant advantages: it's much cheaper than buying in from an external supplier, storage inventory is reduced, waste is cut to a minimum, as is the amount of foam needed to keep the products safe during transit. In an era when brands and industries are moving towards automation, robots and machines, it's great to see companies like HK Audio not only sticking to, but investing in, skilled, time-intensive, artisanal labour. At the scale they are currently producing, it's truly impressive, as the laborious method is extended throughout the entire speaker production process.
I'd like to thank Torsten, Elisa, Holgar, Florian, Michael and everyone at JHS who helped organise an incredible trip and tour. It was both enlightening and mindboggling, yet incredibly reassuring to find that if you are considering HK Audio to be your next brand of speakers, your money will be very well spent. "The care and attention given to each cabinet, at every step of the build, even before any components get screwed into place, is astounding "
