ABOUT US

As an adjunct to Europe’s premier loudspeaker design consultancy, we at FinkTeam create many speakers across a wide range of markets and prices. Loudspeaker manufacturers hire us because of our expertise, experience and extremely well-equipped simulation and measurement facilities. But we are the backroom boys, and so much of our work is confidential. Only if the client elects to mention our involvement are we credited.

When we began, in 2014, designing a loudspeaker for ourselves, we envisaged it to demonstrate our capabilities and as an internal reference. There was no intention that it would go on sale. We are loudspeaker engineers, not loudspeaker manufacturers – at least, not then.

THE TEAM

KARL-HEINZ FINK

Karl-Heinz credits his success of owning Europe’s most successful acoustics design consultancy to being lazy.

He uses his brain to solve a problem rather than manual labour. He detests carrying out the same job repeatedly, which has driven a massive investment in design, modelling and measurement computers and applications. But as he will admit, when pushed, the actual investment has been in people – The Team – and ensuring that the Team can fully utilise and understand the output from this investment.

For over 30 years, Fink has developed award-winning solutions and products for clients worldwide.

NORBERT THEISGES

Norbert is the heart of the FinkTeam project and leads it internally. As a master carpenter with more than 20 year’s experience in High-End cabinets Norbert manages our wood shop. He also runs production and co-ordinates the quality control. He is also a member of the acoustic team and the listening panel. Plays bass guitar and loves funk music.

MARKUS STRUNK

Markus is one of the leading vibration specialists in our industry with a solid scientific background and long experience in all sorts of materials. He runs the cabinet simulations and is responsible for the research programs within the team. His research is the basis of all our cabinet constructions. Loves headphones and High-End in general and riding one of his many push bikes.

SHAUK KHAN

Shauk is doing most of the work related to signal processing like the group delay compensation and other development programs around modern DSP solutions. He is also responsible for all our Klippel devices and keeps them up and running as well as doing a lot of measurements with the various systems in the lab.

NICOLA PAPARELLA

Nicola is the brain behind our simulation work on drive units. He runs our COMSOL department with a lot of creativity and always tries to find new and better solutions for magnets, cones and surrounds. He is constantly learning new things to improve his knowledge – and he has a somewhat hidden passion for horn speakers.

BERND RÖCKERT

Bernd is part of the woodworking team, but does also a lot of the speaker assembly and testing before they go out to the customer. Every speaker that leaves from the production line goes through his hands.

DAVID JEFFERYS

31. December 2022
On Monday David Jefferys, my good friend and our export director, died after a short illness.
This is so sad and we all here in Essen are still having problems realizing that we will never hear his voice again and have not one of his many phone calls. We will miss his friendly and positive attitude and all the experience he collected over so many years.
We met the first time when we both worked for TANNOY, met again in Mordaunt Short, and later on during my Q-Acoustics period. He was always so full of energy, that I could never imagine that he would not be around one day.
Hey David, wherever you are now, I hope you are having a good time. You will always remain in our hearts and I’ll try as hard as I can to make the project successful we have started together. R.I.P. my friend.

But events took an unexpected turn when Marantz Europe’s brand ambassador Ken Ishiwata* heard an early and not very eye-pleasing prototype (known internally as ‚the washing machine‘). He asked us to create an adequately finished version which he could use to demonstrate his electronic designs. This speaker, the WM-3 – with industrial design by Kieron Dunk of IDA in England – unveiled at the Munich High-End show in 2016. The industry reaction was so positive that we had to rethink. Like a car maker who shows a concept car that wows the press and public alike, we experienced an unexpected demand for what we had created.

So, we set about making it a ‚real‘ product, a process that involved much more than creating a small- scale production line. We decided to enhance the design in crucial respects: by swapping the WM-3’s good but not perfect bass driver for our design, improving the midrange driver chassis, and selecting a different AMT (Air Motion Transformer) tweeter. Of course, all these required changes to the crossover and cabinet too.

The result of our efforts, the WM-4, is the best loudspeaker we knew how to make.: the distillation of our vast, deep experience of designing loudspeaker drive units and loudspeaker systems and marrying them into something even greater than the sum of its parts. But that was then, and we pride ourselves on learning more every day

We believe combining our design skills and total control of manufacturing – as we build in-house – allows us to deliver a world-class loudspeaker system at home playing audiophile demo tracks as playing classic rock, jazz and orchestral music.

The WM-4 may be a technical tour-de-force, but it is all for one single purpose: to maximise musical enjoyment.

A year later, we completed Borg’s design – a smaller, domestic room-friendly loudspeaker. Yes, we know an excellent 10inch isn’t going to be better than a great 15inch for bass power and dynamics, but for some, a ten is as large as is practical.

Late in 2020, we released KIM, a design ideal for smaller rooms. KIM, however, isn’t a compromise in accuracy or musicality.

* Ken Ishiwata was a very close friend of Karl-Heinz Fink. We are sad to say that Ken died in 2020. He leaves a massive hole both as a friend, a music lover, a hi-fi-enthusiast, and a guiding light.