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. See
http://www.scan-speak.dk for more
information about the company. All activity on the Internet is private,
but still related to my personal interests, including loudspeakers.
My interests goes 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 has been my main interest basically since I was born and until I
became approximately 20 years old and received my drivers license. Okay,
so you would like to peek into my photoalbum. Here is what my car looked
like, which I have had from April 1999 until August 2002. The car, an
Opel Manta GT 1.8, was manufactured in 1984. It was running great, and
it was paid for. Since then I have been driving a Mazda 323F 1997. See
the green car.
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.
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 are like.
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 a 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 honour to Dynaudio, and sales was booming. It still is a great little speaker. The Audience 40 has been reviewed with very positive response only, throughout the world. It's 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 Focus series comes the closest (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 thinks 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 sparetime I have taken merchantile classes at trading schools in Denmark. First 3 main classes, named Management and Cooperation, Corporate Economy and Corporate Organization. Later I have taken 2 classes: General Marketing and Account Analysis And Financing.
I should add that I have expanded considerably on my computer hobby. It now includes quite an involvement in the Zenwalk Linux OS since 2005 where I am a Public Relations Maintainer (taking care that Zenwalk is marketed properly and that people are happy about 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 currently work at the Vifa site in Videbaek, which now is 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 been 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 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 Videbęk as R & D Manager.
In 2009 the most significant development, which I took care of, was the beryllium tweeter, which became an instant success.
All my designs run with a high production yield. It is one of my key standpoints that high sound quality is not in contradiction to high quality (in a conventional understanding from a production viewpoint). Another one of my key standpoints is that development is a process which includes production engineering (integrated product development). Yet another key point for me is to predict potential failures in the development stage and prevent them from happening, preferably by choosing fail proof design, but sometimes the choice has to be that the quality is assured in the production. I believe these keys are the primary causes of the success you can see in the products I have been involved in.
On the 27th of November 2009, we had Neville Thiele and Graeme Huon visiting our facilities. It was a great pleasure to speak with these men of the international scientific loudspeaker scene. Also from here greetings to their wives Lexie and Jen.
I have a profile at LinkedIn:
