Norway’s Electrocompaniet is a company with a rich
history that dates back to 1973. We weren’t around back when the company produced its
first electronic products, but in 2008 it became clear to us very quickly that
Electrocompaniet is a thoroughly modern high-end company with a full line of components
and a newly developed loudspeaker that impressed us greatly: the Nordic Tone Model 1, a
product featured in ShowStoppers - Series 1.
Earlier in the year, Electrocompaniet acquired Nordic Tone, a loudspeaker company, and a
speaker the company was developing called the Model 1 (17,000 €/pair.). The speaker
was no ordinary speaker, though. According to Electrocompaniet, it was the result of years
of research and development into state-of-the-art loudspeaker design. In short, it was
special; it's also reasonably compact and quite attractive, at least to our eyes.
At High End 2008, the Model 1 was paired with the
Electrocompaniet AW 400 mono amplifiers (9000 €/pair), an EMP-1 SACD player
(5700 €), an EC 4.8 preamplifier (3500 €), and a new line of cabling from PM
Audio named Black Magic Cables. The sound was wonderful. Vocals were smooth and rich; bass
was full, round and seemingly very deep, and there was plenty of detail to balance things
out nicely. Obviously, all aspects of the system must be taken into consideration, but as
for the Model 1 itself, from what we could hear, it seems to be a loudspeaker with
numerous strengths. Obviously, then, we are hoping that at some point in the future we'll
be able to hear more of it.
