Why make a whiskey barrel into speakers?
It is all about the sound A Pioneer engineer with the responsibility of developing new products had a unique idea about capitalizing on the maturation of wood from a whiskey barrel by making it into a speaker cabinet. “When I tapped a piece of this timber to get an idea of the sound it would make, it produced a soft, mellow tone that lingered in the air.” There were those in his product development team that were skeptical but he proceeded forth with his project. “The sound spoke for itself. Once I had fashioned a prototype and compared its sound to that of a conventional speaker, my detractors were finally convinced that I was on to something. This was the mysterious product of nature, a sound that a piece of timber was only able to produce after 50 years of contact with whiskey.” So began Pioneer’s pure malt speaker. The maturing of the wood The oak spends the 50 years of its life helping whiskey mature. As the wood ages it releases ingredients such as tannin and lignin that give whi
