About Audiograil
Like many loudspeaker manufacturers, we started out in the DIY community ourselves.
Steve Oltman, the owner and lead designer of our loudspeakers, has been building speakers as a hobby for over 30 years.
The COVID lockdown in 2020 sparked a noticeable boom in the loudspeaker-building community. Speaker kit companies saw a surge in sales as people stuck at home finally had the time to start or finish long-planned DIY projects. With more time spent at home, the demand for better home audio equipment also grew.
At the same time, supply chain issues—including factory closures and shipping delays—made it harder to buy commercial products, giving people even more reasons to take on a DIY speaker project.
Since Steve is a web developer by profession, he founded DIY-Audio.eu as a hobby project. His main goal was to curate a selection of speaker drivers and components, but he took it a step further—offering these parts to serious DIYers at nearly zero profit margin. The motivation behind it? Giving back to the community that had provided him with invaluable knowledge and support over the years.
Making MDF kit cabinets available for well-known designs from Klang+Ton, Troels Gravesen, Zeph, and Paul Carmody made a lot of DIY enthusiasts in Europe very happy with their builds.
Working with plywood and MDF can be a lot of fun, but Steve always felt frustrated with their limitations. In his early years, he had experienced concrete and stone-based speaker enclosures and always missed the distinct sound character of these challenging-to-DIY designs.
His original design—the predecessor of the Orca Minis—featured an MDF cabinet, but he knew that using an alternative material could unlock those last few percent of performance from a quality standpoint.
Audio technology must adapt to the evolving demands of customers. Introducing modern materials ensures precision and clarity in any environment.
The solution was quite obvious: solid surface materials have been around since the 1970s. While they’re difficult to source in small quantities, require precision tools, cost ten times more than MDF or plywood, and demand specialized expertise to work with, they remain an ideal choice for high-end speaker construction.
Working with Corian isn’t something you can easily do in a home garage—it requires specialized training and a contract to access and process the material.
The time and effort invested finally paid off—the missing piece for bringing music to life from the recording had been discovered.
Steve also realized that solid surface speaker cabinets are a rarity in the sub-five-digit price range.
Of course, when investing significantly in cabinet manufacturing, it makes no sense to pair it with low-quality, budget drivers—it simply wouldn’t be justified to have a $1,000 cabinet with $20 worth of drivers and electronics.
At Audiograil, we believe the future of sound lies in utilizing the best materials available. We strive to balance affordability, engineering, and design, carefully selecting drivers that truly justify the use of a solid surface cabinet, ensuring they can unlock the full musical potential of every recording.