Switzerland

Switzerland makes loudspeakers the way it makes everything else: in small series, to tolerances that would be uneconomic anywhere else. The precision-machining base that grew up around watchmaking and instrumentation gives Swiss makers access to extruded and milled metal enclosures, ribbon and planar transducers and mechanical parts held to tight limits — expensive processes that only pay off at low volume and high price. The result is a national output that splits between cost-no-object domestic audio and exacting professional monitoring.