Askja Audio develops a high-end audio system with 3D printing

The French Startup Askja Audio was founded in 2014 to provide a revolutionary audio solution for all music lovers. Called Askja Origin, this set includes multiple mechanical 3D printed parts, including electronics boxes. Its founder Didier Kwak has especially imagined a large hybrid amplifier whose housing design made it very difficult to achieve using traditional methods. This challenge has been overcome thanks to 3D technologies that offer more freedom in terms of geometric complexity and design. We met Didier Kwak to learn more about the design process of his audio solution and to better understand the link between 3D technologies and music.

3DN: Can you introduce yourself?

Hello, my name is Didier Kwak. I worked for 30 years in cinema and advertising, mostly in the field of image. For example; I worked on the design of the Visual Effects of the Fifth Element of Besson. As an advertising director I was more often confronted with the production of soundtracks. I found that while technological developments such as digital were rather favourable to the resulting quality of the image, the quality of the sound kept falling apart, including the personal systems of listening to music or the monitoring professional auditoriums.

Didier Kwak

3DN: How did you come up with the idea of ​​this audio system?

I was Interested for a long time in psychoacoustics which studies how the ears and brain receive the music, I decided to design a system totally against the foot of the world production. A system that promotes realism, the veracity of the sound emitted, from conventional sources like the CD but without compression.