We make twelve things so we can still answer for them in 2031.
Nightglass began in a borrowed garage behind the Kiruna sports hall in 2017, re-coning a pair of monitors nobody else would touch. The repair work never stopped, and it is still the reason the catalogue is short.
A specification is a promise you can be held to. An adjective is not.
Almost everything written about headphones is written in adjectives — warm, airy, musical, revealing. None of those words can be wrong, which is exactly what makes them useless. So we stopped using them. Every pair that leaves this room carries the frequency sweep it actually produced, on an A5 card, signed by whoever ran it, with the serial number printed at the top.
If a pair falls outside ±1.2 dB of the reference it goes back on the bench, and if it cannot be brought in it is dismantled for parts. In 2025 that happened eleven times out of four hundred and six. We would rather tell you that number than tell you our headphones are musical.
Everything is measured against one pair that never leaves the room.
The Polar One on the end bench was built in 2019 and has been re-padded four times. It is the standard every other pair is compared with, and it is re-certified against a laboratory microphone every March. When the reference drifts, the whole catalogue drifts with it — which is why it is the only thing here that is not for sale.
- Sweeps run at 1/24 octave in a sealed coupler
- Two operators, two runs, averaged — never a single pass
- Reference re-certified every March against a calibrated mic
- Every card archived by serial for the full warranty
What happens between the order and the carton.
The frame
Magnesium yokes and the headband arrive machined; we assemble, torque and leave them overnight so the metal settles before anything delicate goes near it.
The diaphragm
A two-micron film is tensioned across the array, rested a full night, and tensioned again in the morning. This is the step that cannot be hurried and the step that decides the bass.
The measurement
Two operators run two sweeps each in the coupler and average them. Inside ±1.2 dB the card is printed and signed; outside it, the pair goes back three steps.
The carton
Pads fitted, cable coiled, felt case cut to the folded shape, card on top. Weighed, sealed, and handed over to the carrier before the afternoon collection.
The people who keep the bench busy.
They re-cabled a twenty-year-old pair that two shops had refused, charged me forty-five euro, and sent back a photograph of the joint. I have bought two pairs from them since.
Elias Norrgård · Luleå · repair customer since 2019I drove four hours for a listening session expecting a sales pitch and got an hour of someone explaining why the cheaper pair was the right one for my room.
Maja Stenbacka · Skellefteå · bought the KR-2 MonitorOur studio runs six of their monitors. In three years we have sent two back for pads and nothing else, and both came home inside a week.
Ingvar Rask · Gävle · studio ownerThe room is open, and the kettle is on.
Every pair in the catalogue is set up on a bench in Kiruna, including the one that is sold out. An hour here costs nothing and saves most people a return.