Scan-Speak

Why it is renowned

Scan-Speak makes drive units that other loudspeaker brands build into their own speakers, for home audio, professional, car and aerospace use; it sells to these makers directly and through distributors and dealers in more than 35 countries.¹ Its Revelator range, with slit paper cones and Symmetrical Drive motors, has long been a standard part in high-end speakers.² The American trade press agrees: reviewing a Revelator midrange in 2016, the loudspeaker engineer Vance Dickason of Voice Coil, republished by audioXpress, called the Revelator 18W/8531G00 a classic of high-end audio and one of the drivers most often seen in high-end loudspeakers.³

The Scottish Linn Isobarik used Scan-Speak's D2008 tweeter from its early production runs.⁴

The story

Ejvind Skaaning founded Scan-Speak on 1 February 1970 to make drivers for the Scandyna and Dynaco A-25 speakers.⁵ The engineer Ragnar Lian designed the D2008 dome tweeter in 1971 and patented the Symmetric Drive motor in 1973, which uses copper caps to make the voice coil's inductance even around its rest position.⁵ After a bankruptcy in the mid-1970s, Dantax bought the name and equipment and restarted production in Pandrup in 1978.⁵

Vifa took over Scan-Speak between 1987 and 1989 and moved its production to Videbæk; in 2009 a group of Danish investors, among them former Scan-Speak managers, bought the company back.⁶ It now runs as an independent company in the Eastech Group under Danish management, and about 50 people develop and hand-build its drivers.⁷ After 34 years in Videbæk it moved to new premises in Herning.⁸

What to know it by

• Revelator²Drive units with slit cones and ring-magnet tweeters
• Illuminator⁹Drive units with underhung voice coils and long excursion
• D2008⁵1971Ragnar LianDome tweeter
• Discovery⁶Range that keeps part of Vifa's classic programme