Colección: Stenheim

FASHIONED BY THE MOUNTAINS
THAT SURROUND US

The canton of Valais (pronounced “valley”) in Switzerland consists of the Rhône valley and the steep Alps that rear up on either side of it. These mountains contain world famous ski resorts such as Zermatt, the home of the Matterhorn, Verbier, Crans-Montana or Saas Fee. 

The people of the Valais are famously independent, uncompromising, straight-talking and even a little forbidding on a first encounter. But once you have got to know them, they are warm-hearted, amusing and intensely loyal. They also possess the resourcefulness and seriousness that typifies mountain people, because in a harsh environment you need to be self-reliant and precise – it can make the difference between life and death.

Stenheim speakers are every inch a product of the Valais. They may seem outwardly austere in their hard aluminium enclosures but listen to them and their generous nature is immediately apparent as the music pours out of them, precise, detailed, as clear as a mountain torrent.

They eschew trends because mountain people have no time for the transient and follow nobody.

Founded in 2010, Stenheim quickly became a leader among Swiss audio brands. In 2011, and after two years of research and development, Stenheim launched its first product, the Alumine Two. These compact, all-aluminium, bookshelf speakers were created to be proof that aluminium enclosures coupled with high-efficiency drivers would deliver truly remarkable musical performance. It is a design philosophy from which all Stenheim speakers are derived.

A passionate believer in the Alumine concept from the very beginning, Jean-Pascal Panchard took over the running of the company in 2013 to develop the idea into a coherent line of aluminium speakers. He was a music aficionado and engineer by training who brought with him extensive experience in the High End audio market, having worked with some of the leading Swiss names.

What would happen, the company now wondered, if you took the Alumine concept and scaled it up massively, with no regard to cost, to produce a speaker that would provide the deepest bass and fill the largest rooms with crystalline music? Stenheim developed its first Reference speaker as a result in 2014.

Over the years, the Alumine line would expand into the Alumine Five, which took all sorts of learnings from the Reference, and then a scaled down and less costly version of this, the Alumine Three. In parallel, the Reference line also expanded to include the mighty Reference Statement, an ensemble of two main towers and two sub-towers, created for the largest and most demanding systems. Then in 2021, the Reference Ultime Two was launched, a sort of compact Reference but still an imposing speaker.

The company had moved premises in the meantime to an all-new facility just a few miles down the road in Vétroz. Here, still in the heart of the Alps, Stenheim speakers continue to be put together by hand in the shadow of the mountains that surround them.