To that end, he has engaged the services of audio design consultant extraordinaire, or speaker building gun-for-hire par excellence if you prefer, Karl-Heinz Fink (of Fink Team fame). KHF has been the go-to consultant for speaker companies the world over for quite some time – a role that has enabled him to accumulate possibly the most comprehensive suite of measuring/listening facilities available, along with considerable experience in applying them. But most of those projects have been cost constrained, certainly speakers towards the lower end of the market. But irrespective of price, the fundamental approach is still going to be the same – as we have seen from his own, Fink team designs <https://gy8.eu/review/der-prinz/>. So for KHF too, the Peak Consult project was the opportunity to apply his talents and experience to products in which musical performance trumped cost considerations.
Between the two of them, they specified new drivers from Audio Technology, working with the supplier to modify and optimise them to Peak’s design requirements and purposes. They developed new crossovers to pair the electro-acoustic system with the enclosed volume and mechanical behaviour of the cabinets. They listened exhaustively to the whole cornucopia of audiophile crossover components, selecting on sound rather than price. Sometimes the most expensive option won out – and sometimes it didn’t… Between them, along with Per Kristoffersen, they refined the existing El Diablo model while developing first, two completely new designs in the distinctively Peak shapes of the Sinfonia and slightly smaller, two-way Sonora, before turning their attention to the far more ambitious (and considerably more impressive) Dragon Legacy, a five-driver, three-way, D’Appolito design that at €185,000 and 225kgs each, weighs straight into one of the most hotly contested high-end market sectors there is.
With the electrical elements and cabinets in place, you might consider that job done, but to do so is to ignore the third, equally important part of the equation. Lennart Asbjørn is an audiophile, but he is not from within the audio industry. His background is in restaurants and large scale catering operations, a field in which the reliable and timely arrival of a whole host of different products through multiple supply chains demands some serious management capabilities – and that’s before you get to the personalities involved! Reliable supply of consistent materials and components is essential to running a successful audio business and building its global reputation. Where high-end companies could once rely on local sales, those days are gone, especially when your most affordable product starts at €25,000. The high-end market is genuinely global, even for a low-volume, specialist producer like Peak Consult. In fact, especially for a low-volume producer, a business model that creates its own challenges and pressures when it comes to customer confidence and product consistency. Creating a hand-built, artisan finished design is one thing: reliably supplying it as a product to customers around the world is quite another. It’s a factor that is often overlooked and just as often underestimated when it comes to assessing the viability and longevity of any product and the company that makes it. In the case of Peak Consult, the Holy Trinity of the skills to build, the experience to refine and optimise and the diligence and business acumen to supply is well and truly embedded at the company’s core.
