Home of cfuttrup

About me and my work

Picture of me My real name is Claus Futtrup. I have a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering Design (MSc ME), I graduated summer 1997 from Aalborg University. I then started to work at a loudspeaker manufacturer named Dynaudio. As of May 2006 I have changed to another loudspeaker manufacturer named Tymphany. As Tymphany was split into several companies, I stayed with the Danish Scan-Speak section. As of September 2013 I have changed to another loudspeaker manufacturer named SEAS. See http://www.seas.no for more information about the company. As of Auguts 2021 I have changed to work for DALI in Denmark. All activity on the Internet is private, but still related to my personal interests, including loudspeakers.

My interests go in many directions, almost anything can catch my attention, but I spend a big part of my time on various technical and technological topics. Loudspeakers and music, cars, computer science and programming, material science (a part directly related to my education), mathematics and physics etc.

Cars have been my main interest basically since I was born and until I became approximately 20 years old and received my drivers license. Check out my car photo album.

Another one of the interests that I have had since childhood is dogs, and the bigger the better. I would love to have one, but I don't have the required space.

Though by no means an expert, I do enjoy the game of chess.

Below you can see my current apartment, placed on the first floor, 89 square meters (958 square feet). Decent, but nothing fancy.

Picture of my apartment I share the apartment with my American girlfriend since 1998, Nancy, and our two cats, Shithead and Velcro. I don't know if you can imagine what those cats were like. They were put to sleep on Monday the 17th of July 2017. Shithead was 18 and Velcro 17 years old.

My third hobby started at the age of approximately 15, constructing loudspeakers, which I am currently making a living of. With this hobby following me through my studies to become an MSc Me and building speakers for friends I have had quite a bit of success in this field.

At Dynaudio I have been the driving force behind the engineering of the Audience 40 success, the first speaker I made for Dynaudio. It became the winner of a nice EISA prize (European Imaging and Sound Award) for the best speaker product of the year 1999/2000 in the lower price class. EISA consists of journalists from about 40 magazines in 19 countries around Europe, and they vote for the best product. To win this prize was a great honor to Dynaudio, and sales were booming. It still is a great little speaker. The Audience 40 has been reviewed with very positive response only, throughout the world. Its successor, Audience 42, is an even better bang-for-the-buck. The rework was done by my colleague Jan Moller, and released summer 2000. Today the Audience series has been replaced by something else, I am not sure but think the first replacement was the Focus series (with Focus 110 being similar to the Audience 40).

I went on, together with my colleague Henrik T. Adsersen, to construct the Contour 1.3 SE, a successful modification of the Contour 1.3 MkII. The SE was designed for very high frequency response linearity and with its kick-ass bass 17cm woofer it provides extended low-bass for such a small box. The crossover is very nice too. The sound is a bit monitor-like, and very neutral indeed. It has been a reference inside the Dynaudio development department for several years after it was introduced fall 1998. I have seen several competitors with expensive loudspeakers use this speaker for reference as well. No other speaker has been sold in such numbers to workers at the Dynaudio development department before. It is quite difficult to sell speakers to employees at the development department because we know what is coming next - and for a start it may look even more promising than what's currently available. The Contour 1.3 SE has also been reviewed with very positive response only.

Further on I have been the project manager of Dynaudio Evidence, the 80,000 USD (per set) speakers. This speaker was, and still is, a SOTA (state-of-the-art) product. It gained ultimately high scores in a German magazine, and won the "Speaker of the year" in the American Stereophile magazine. Believe it or not, but Dynaudio doesn't pay for such good reviews. The products are simply that good. Some people find "Master" Evidence to be too expensive. The most recent product from my hand is Evidence Temptation - at half the price it brings you much of what Master Evidence can do for you. Some people think that it fits better into a normal sized listening room and for this reason can give you more than what Master Evidence brings. Besides the sound differences the Master Evidence still has the advantages of modularity and the ability to upgrade sections as improvements may show up, although for the first 10 years there has been no modifications, which in itself is a tribute to a design made right from the beginning.

Designing speaker systems doesn't have much to do with mechanical engineering. My primary interest is driver design, which can involve much more mechanical engineering. I have worked with new drivers throughout the Evidence project and previous projects. Afterwards, I turned toward automotive markets, as System Engineer for Automotive, where special drivers have been designed and new audio concepts explored.

As System Engineer for Automotive I have been in charge of the implementation of the following car models:

At Dynaudio I was working in several sub-organizations, like the environment group, the safety committee and the quality audit group.

In my spare time I have taken mercantile classes at trading schools in Denmark. First 3 main classes, named Management and Cooperation, Corporate Economy and Corporate Organization. Later I took 2 classes: General Marketing and Account Analysis And Financing.

I should add that I expanded considerably on my computer hobby for a period of time, primarily 2005 - 2008. It included quite an involvement in the Zenwalk Linux OS since 2005 where I am/was a Public Relations Maintainer (taking care that Zenwalk is marketed properly and that people are happy about Zenwalk). I continue to follow the activities in the Linux world and Zenwalk.

As mentioned at the top I switched to Tymphany Corporation in May 2006. A company which purchased DST (Danish Sound Technology), previously two Danish giants on the market for hi-fi quality loudspeaker transducers, named Vifa (Videbaek Hojttalerfabrik) and Peerless. I worked at the Vifa site in Videbaek, which became a separate company, Scan-Speak - a company with a lot of heritage, not least it was founded by the same man that founded Dynaudio; Ejvind Skaaning.

By the end of 2006 it has been an interesting journey working in a truly international organization, with new colleagues, new work methods and sharing knowledge with other co-workers. Indeed a very inspiring environment.

At Tymphany I have written an AES paper for the 121st Convention in San Fransisco (5-8 October 2006) about a shallow subwoofer design. It was very interesting to join alongside with Christopher Struck, meeting and shaking hands with other famous and respectful people like Richard Small, Siegfried Linkwitz and Don Keele.

In December 2006 I went to the Tymphany China factory to implement a customer project (beryllium tweeter for Harman / Revel Ultima). It was a pleasant and inspiring 3 weeks stay.

As of January 2008 I was promoted to Scan Speak Research and Development Manager. Prior to this I was assisting Bob True from about November 2006 to run the R&D department at the Scan-Speak site.

Some of the most significant work that I have done at Scan-Speak, is that I was the driving force behind the development of the Illuminator series of woofers, midranges and tweeters. I organized a team, which in part took care of the heritage of Scan-Speak and in part looked ahead with its unique technical properties (and design). The development of the woofers ran from mid 2007 and until the end of 2008, whereas the fabulous Illuminator 12MU midrange development ran like clockwork from summer 2008 and until the end of the year 2008.

As of April 2009, when Scan-Speak A/S was founded and separated from Tymphany Denmark, I continued at Scan-Speak in Videbaek as R&D Manager.

In 2009 the most significant development, which I took care of, was the beryllium tweeter, which became an instant success. In December 2009 I had the pleasure to meet Albert Neville Thiele and company, when they visited the Scan-Speak facilities.

In 2010 I co-authored a scientific paper for the AES. It was released in June in the AES Journal, which was followed by several other papers.

In 2011 my most significant development was the completion of no less than 6 transducer-projects for SONY Corp. to become the NAxES series of speakers. Projects that had been in development for more than two years.

In 2012 I developed a 2 inch fullrange which not only outperforms the competition regarding bass extension and midrange clarity, but also introduced a new ingenious manufacturing setup. The setup was completed early 2013 and the first large order for 50,000 units completed April 2013.

In 2013 I was asked to leave Scan-Speak, primarily because Scan-Speak had to cut staff and that included management. I started searching for a new job. My first priority was to work in a similar company and I'd prefer SEAS. Luckily timing could not have been better and SEAS was able to hire me. I became "Technical Sales Manager" for SEAS in September 2013.

At the end of 2014, from September to mid January, I was appointed R&D manager at SEAS for a 4 month period, while Håvard Sollien was on paternity leave.

March 2015 I was promoted to Chief Technical Officer (CTO), with responsibility for much of the technical management and leadership at SEAS and nine employees in the R&D, the mechanical workshop and IQC (incoming quality control).

In the fall of 2015 I authored a chapter in a book, the book is titled "Danish Loudspeakers - 100 years" and you can find it online here at issuu. The book was published by danishsound.org (this is the main link). A dedicated website 100YOS was created to celebrate 100 Years of Sound and here you can read some short stories.

In January 2016: At the ALMA International Symposium and Expo 2016, I talked about "Losses in Loudspeakers."

Later in 2016 I was interviewed for the Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook Q&A section.

In January 2017: At the ALMA International Symposium and Expo 2017 (AISE2017), Jeff Candy and I presented a paper. Please see the Blogspot for further info: Link. The AISE2017 presentation was the basis for an article in the Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook 2017: (page 124-128). In December 2017, the related AES paper was published in the JAES. See the Scientific Papers section for details.

During the year 2019 I took a 12-week crash course in Emotional Intelligence from KeyStep Media, to improve my leadership skills. Their setup includes a personal coach, with six coaching sessions, which I found to be very useful.

During the spring season of 2020, Jeff Candy and I launched Speakerbench and we wrote an article about it in the LIS 2020 (Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook, published 30. June 2020), see page 124. This article was mentioned 12 days ahead by the news feed named AudioXpress. During the fall season we launched a the Speakerbench YouTube channel.

I have written a book "SEAS Fabrikkers historie" about the history of SEAS 1950-2020. It was printed in 200 copies for a start and the ISBN number is 978-82-303-4824-6. Including front and rear cover it is 80 pages. I remember when I was a teenager in the Gymnasium I told one of the teachers I want to write a book. 32 years later I can now say that I have accomplished this goal in my life. P.S. The book is in Norwegian. You can buy the book from 1) Audiatur Bokhandel AS (they're willing to send international), 2) daCapo HiFi AS or 3) at the Moss By- og Industrimuseum.

The book "SEAS Fabrikkers historie" is sold out (or almost, you might be lucky to find one for sale). Meanwhile SEAS has published the book in English, titled The History of SEAS Fabrikker and it was printed in 300 copies, arriving early July 2021. The ISBN number is 978-82-303-5081-2. You can buy the book from Audiatur Bokhandel AS. They have a webshop and they ship international. We hope that select distributors of SEAS products will also carry this book. Buying from your local distributor should reduce the shipping cost. The English language book was reviewed by Mike Klasco in the AudioXpress magazine.

In 2021 I changed my job from CTO at SEAS Fabrikker in Norway to Acoustics Manager at DALI in Denmark. Although I like Norway very much, it is a beautiful country, I enjoy being closer to my family, and for example able to celebrate my 50th birthday without significant struggles in traveling between the two countries (and subsequently a 10 day quarantine due to Covid-19 travel restrictions). Later that year, SEAS Fabrikker was granted a patent on a loudspeaker magnet system, that I invented, see US patent 11553279.

In May 2022 DALI launched the KORE flagship loudspeaker at the Munich High-End show. My role in the overall project is limited, since I was hired midway through the project. I took care of implementing the drivers in production in cooperation with the production engineering department, including a newly designed textile dome tweeter, which ideally shall have a linear frequency response to 15 kHz at an off-axis angle of 25 degrees. Quite an unusual target. It is the first dome tweeter manufactured in-house at DALI in Denmark, so quite a leap. I also handled the passive crossover layout and implementation in production.

In May 2023 DALI launched the EPIKORE 11 loudspeaker at the Munich High-End show. I developed the drivers and took part of the overall development from the beginning to the end, and there's a Youtube video about it from SoundStage Network. I also finished the development of the PHANTOM IW SUB S-100, a subwoofer for in-wall installation (the project had been in the hands of Jan Møller), which I think is quite an unusual product. End of July 2023 I published two videos on the Speakerbench YouTube channel about loudspeaker bass reflex alignments. Attention to these videos through AudioXpress meant that the number of subscribers more than doubled within a couple of weeks.

In 2024 DALI launched the EPIKORE line, among other products, where I have played a significant part of the development. A significant achievement is the development of a new 7-inch mid-woofer, which has low distortion and extended frequency response. I talk a bit about it in this YouTube video by SoundStage! Network. I also published a number of articles in AudioXpress and Voice Coil Magazine about bass reflex alignments:

  1. AudioXpress January 2024 article about alignments and their history.
  2. Voice Coil Magazine May 2024 article about computation of classical alignments.
  3. Voice Coil Magazine June 2024 article about the LR4 (Linkwitz-Riley) alignment.
  4. Voice Coil Magazine July 2024 article about the IB4 (Inter-Order Butterworth) alignment.
  5. Voice Coil Magazine August 2024 article about the CD4 (Critically Damped) alignment.
  6. Voice Coil Magazine September 2024 article about Transitional alignments.
  7. Voice Coil Magazine October 2024 article about Compliance Alteration.

I have a profile at LinkedIn: Claus Futtrup's profile on LinkedIn
Feel free to check it out, but be aware, I only connect with people I know, preferably people I have met in person and done business with.

I have a profile at ResearchGate: Claus Futtrup's profile on ResearchGate