As SoundStage! Ultra senior editor Jason Thorpe and I wandered the halls and atria of the Munich Order Center on Saturday morning, we decided to stop for a brief rest near the entrance of the building. As we lounged on a white-cushioned bench, we looked up, almost in unison, at the conspicuous 12-foot-tall poster directly in front of us. It urged us to head to the Auer Acoustics room and see their new speakers.
“Oh, huh, you see that?” Jason noted the text at the bottom of the poster. “Those speakers are made from Tankwood. Panzerholz. They used to use it as bulletproof cladding on tanks when steel was in short supply.”
“Oh yeah?” I responded. “That sounds neat, it must be quite a bit heavier-duty than your standard Baltic birch plywood.”
“Ohhhhh, yeah, definitely. That’s an interesting concept, wonder if they sound any good.”
“Maybe we should head over there, eh?” I answered. Then I thought to myself, what could make a better material for loudspeakers than a sort of wood that can be substituted for armor plating? We got side-tracked and didn’t go there right away, but as I continued about, I kept seeing these huge ads everywhere. “Panzerholz!” they proclaimed. “Tankwood!”
I finally headed to the room sans Jason and was met with a bevy of colorful floorstanding loudspeakers, with a couple of smaller standmount designs up on the counters. The styling of the Auer Acoustics speakers is rather subdued, fitting neatly into the narrow, multi-driver tower genre, but that’s the design I like most as long as it’s done well, and these German loudspeakers certainly are. The brochure indicated that the speakers are offered in three matte colors, six glossy ones, and two wood-veneer finishes. It seemed that most of these options were crammed into Auer’s small exhibit space.
I learned from a brand rep that Auer Acoustics was founded around three years ago, when Robert Auer decided to turn his passion for loudspeakers into a side gig, which has since bloomed into more of a main job. All of the loudspeakers from German boutique brand are sealed-box designs, and utilize drivers from Danish manufacturer Scan-Speak. And all of their enclosures are indeed made by German craftsmen from real panzerholz.
It was explained to me that panzerholz is a wood product that can be dense enough to rival artificial materials because it’s made with phenolic resin under incredibly high pressure. A gentle knock on the side of one of these speakers feels something akin to rapping one’s knuckles against a Caterpillar diesel-engine block. They’re simply immovable.
I ducked into their listening room, where I was met with a Ferrari-red pair of Versura V4 floorstanders, Auer Acoustics’ flagship. There was a sense of physicality but also of a certain lightness, as true-to-life sound elements flew around the room. I noticed that this effect whether the program material was a spooky downtempo techno track or a classical choral performance. Percussive elements seemed to have an especially great sense of impact, aided no doubt by the Versura V4’s unbelievable bass extension and control. Auer claims the four-way tower speaker is 3dB down at 20Hz. I was told that it sells for €45,000 per pair. The company is still figuring out distribution to North America so there is no price in other currencies at the moment.
So what do I think of speakers made from the wood they used to use to bullet-proof tanks? Simply put, Auer Acoustics’ speakers are built to extraordinarily high standards. The pair I heard looked great and sounded excellent. The company’s products will probably be hard to find on my side of the Atlantic, at least for a while, which is a shame. But I hope they find success here in Europe, and just as importantly, that the company decides that buying all those posters was worth it. I’m sure glad I saw them and followed their advice.
Matt Bonaccio
Contributor, SoundStage!
