SEAS: The History of SEAS Fabrikker - A Loudspeaker History Book

This is an engaging story of Scandinavian Electro Acoustic Systems (SEAS) and its place in the Nordic Speaker Industry, written by Danish loudspeaker engineer Claus Futtrup and jointly published by SEAS and Futtrup.

Nordic loudspeaker engineering is legendary, and many of the speaker drivers now manufactured in Asia started life on the back of napkins in various snow-covered brick buildings in Scandinavia. From soft dome tweeters to very linear magnetic designs, the audio industry owes much of these developments to the pioneering Nordic audio brands. Of course, there is more than speakers from the region. We should not forget the superb audio test instruments from Brüel & Kjær, GRAS, or Loudsoft, and Denmark’s lion share of the world’s advanced hearing aids.

Notable audio brands with Nordic DNA include Skaaning Audio Technology, Hiquphon, Ortofon, Peerless, Scandyna, Vifa, Scan-Speak, Peerless, SEAS, Dynaudio, Bang & Olufsen, or Dali, among many others. While most of these companies originated in Denmark, many have or had close ties across the Scandinavian region, including in Norway, where SEAS is located.
  Scandinavian Electro Acoustic Systems, or SEAS was formed in 1956 with two shareholders, Jan Wessel and C.C. Nørgaard Madsen. But the story of the company starts in 1948, when Wessel decided to start making loudspeaker units for his own production of radio sets and employed C.C. Nørgaard Madsen as a designer. Wessel was a Norwegian radio engineer, and the owner of Radionette, a receiver manufacturer later acquired by Tandberg, another major Norwegian electronics company. 

Radionette's radio factory was founded in 1927 and noted for its unique capability for connection to the AC mains rather than battery power. These appliances started an entire revolution of the local radio market. Soon after founding SEAS, Wessel and Madsen decided to separate the loudspeaker and the radio business in order to be able to sell loudspeakers to other radio manufacturers in Norway and abroad. The company moved to the Norwegian town of Moss in 1951 and is still based in this town. 

In 1961, Wessel and Nørgaard Madsen bought Videbæk Højttalerfabrik, a Danish company (also known as Vifa), from Nørgaard Madsens’ father, N.C. Madsen, which developed and supplied loudspeakers for Bang & Olufsen. The book provides the inside history (at least from the SEAS Norwegian perspective) of family interconnection (and in-fighting) to Vifa, Dynaudio, Scan-Speak, Tymphany, and even Morel in Israel. The most intriguing gossip was how the Danish affiliate managed to wrestle ownership and control from the Norwegian owners of what was to become Vifa, with the support of the Danish government and their local bank.

The story of these companies and the individuals who founded them is more convoluted than any TV soap opera, and like the soaps, continues even today. Most of the companies started small and have remained so, with gross sales in the range of US $10 million and staffs of 30 people or so. A few, in their golden years were mid-sized contenders with hundreds of employees, but the intense taxes and socialist government structures have been self-limiting.

Well, I am not going to be the spoiler, you will just have to read this well-written and engaging book with its insights in how these speaker guys navigated a boutique audio company to survive all these years under many changes of owners, mergers and acquisitions.

For more loudspeaker history and the remarkable contributions of the Danish loudspeaker industry read this additional content.
  Back in 2014, I wrote a series of articles for audioXpress about this history. My knowledge was from my experiences in the selection process of acquiring a small but prestigious Scandinavian speaker company for a large Asian client. But most importantly, I also had an invaluable resource in Claus Futtrup who, for almost 30 years, had contributed to speaker technology. 

His impressive career begins at Dynaudio, then Tymphany Denmark A/S and continued with Scan-Speak in post-Tymphany times. About 8 years ago Claus joined SEAS in Norway and as you read this he is settling in as the Acoustic Manager at Dali, finally back home with his family in Denmark. Closing out his time at SEAS, we now have been gifted with his comprehensive book, appropriately titled SEAS: The History of SEAS Fabrikker, which also offers fascinating details about the intricate connections between Scandinavian audio companies. 

I remember a (much younger) Claus sending me an email that his team at Dynaudio liked an article on the acoustics of glue joints I wrote for Voice Coil – that must have been more than 25 years ago (and updated from time to time in Voice Coil magazine).
  SEAS: The History of SEAS Fabrikker covers the years 1950-2020, when the company celebrated its 70th anniversary. You can buy the book from Audiatur Bokhandel AS - the bookstore ships internationally - and select distributors also have the book available for purchase.

Claus Futtrup: SEAS: The History of SEAS Fabrikker, 2021
ISBN: 9788230348246
  This article was originally published in The Audio Voice newsletter (#343), September 2, 2021.