Grimm Audio LS1c ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKER SYSTEM

It's not unusual for audiophiles to have fond childhood recollections of the old family stereo, but Eelco Grimm's memory of his dad's audio system probably stands alone.

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It's not just that Piet Grimm, a professional pilot for the Dutch air defense,' had a pair of very fine Infinity speakers, a Pioneer receiver, and a Technics turntable. Others surely did, too. It's more that he purchased the system from a military PX shop at a US air force base in Germany, then happily flew the equipment home to the Netherlands on his Northrop F5 supersonic fighter plane. That's not run-of-themill cool, that's Top Gun cool.

Years later, Eelco, too, started taking stereo gear to new altitudes, becoming a designer of high-end speakers and electronics. After Grimm Audio, a 15-person enterprise, moved to a building near Eindhoven airport in the southern Netherlands, he realized that it stands in almost the exact spot where his dad used to park his fighter jet.

I learned this from a day of hanging out with Eelco and cofounder and Technical Director Guido Tent at High End Munich last year. Or maybe it was during one of our dozens of emails and Facetime calls. The communication intensified after I took delivery of a Grimm LS1c system in September. Grimm's passion and commitment are impossible to miss or misconstrue. In my experience, for every fly-by-night audio business-for every purveyor of audiophile tweaks that defy the laws of physics-there's at least one polar opposite. Grimm Audio is among the high-end companies where science, engineering, and the pursuit of perfection are sacrosanct, exceeded only by a seriously deep love of music, reproduced faithfully.