About

The Past

Rauna was founded in Sweden in early 1982 by Bo Hansson, Lennart Bergstedt, and Olle Neckman.

Their idea was to create an acoustically perfect and stable but yet affordable speaker cabinet, a combination never before seen on conventional loudspeakers. A true high-fidelity loudspeaker created for music lovers, that all music lovers can afford.

They derived the name Rauna from the names Raunavaara and Runa. Raunavaara is the family name of Bo Hansson’s grandparents and Runa are ancient inscribed Nordic stones. The speakers were named to transcend time, they became both a tribute to ancestors and steady as rocks.

Production started and success came immediately. During Rauna’s peak years, they had more than half of the market share in Sweden for high-quality speakers, and that part was only 20 % of production. The rest was exported to countries like the USA, Germany, Norway and Denmark just to name a few, with the United States being the lead importer.

Rauna had a slogan: "The worst thing you can build out of six chipboard pieces is a loudspeaker". The phrase was coined by a HiFi Show visitor after listening to a demonstration of the Rauna Leira speakers.

Despite the tremendous success, company management disagreements led Bo Hansson to leave Rauna, and in 1984 he started his own brand under the name Opus 3. Some may be familiar with the Opus 3 name from the famous Record company with the same name, well-known for  their excellent recordings. Bo Hansson run Opus 3 with Jan-Erik Persson, the latter still making truly great recordings under the label.

The production of the Opus3 speakers took place in the small town of Degerfors in the deep woods of Sweden. The first model produced was the Capella bookshelf speaker, followed shortly after by the Delta series with the Credo, Chorus and Chaconne models. The Opus 3 Credo and Chorus speakers are actually the basis of our current Rauna speaker models, Vidar and Vale, updated and refined in every way.

Cresendo, the largest Opus 3 model was made next, but production stopped shortly after as the speaker was just too heavy! The turntable Continuo, still in production today, was also a part of the Opus 3 portfolio, as was the Candela Valve amplifier. All of it designed by Bo Hansson and built under his watchful eye.

In the early 1990s the Swedish economy took a downturn and along with it, so did Opus 3. Unable to pay back its debt Opus 3 found itself in liquidation. The concrete cabinet molding equipment was later purchased by another company formed by Bo Hansson. The Rauna brand was also purchased by the same company, but due to financial struggles the company did not survive long. (what was the name of this company?)

By 2003 Bo Hansson regrouped and once again bought everything back. This time he also bought Sinus, the only Swedish manufacturer of speaker driver units already used in the Opus 3 speaker lines. He started to design his own speaker driver units for his speaker production, and he even received a patent on a new type of spider.

Production has since been made in smaller volumes. Inspired by Bo own Reference-speaker system that was actually built in his house he also made larger models as CaveRex, Ukko, Hugin and Munin. The turntable Continuo was always hept in production. A small amount of Credo and Tyr was also produced.

The Present

Bo Hansson really lived for his music and to achive a very natural sound-reproduction.

In the year 2011, even though he was retired by age, he had plans to start loudspeakerproduction in a larger volume again and produce the new affordable Rauna, but saidly he passed away in May the same year. The turntable was taken over by the carpenter that previusly worked with Continuo for the last years, named Håkan Agborg at Nykroppa Snickeri. When Håkan passed away 2017, Jimmy Kroon and Peter Ahlatalo took over and they are currently working on new models.

The stock of Sinus-driveunits, production equipment e t c was bought by the two brothers Lennart and Martin Niklasson. Lennart is developing and supports the speakers while Martin taking care of sales and marketing. They have both worked with Bo Hanssons products since mid 1980:s and truly understand what Bo´s vision was.

"Our hopes is to be able to further develope Bo Hanssons nice products and refine the concept. Even after more than 40 years his concept is still very up-to-date and still can compete with cheaply made "Far east" speakers without costing more. The performance is clearly better".

It took a while to develope new kits for old models, but they were launched in March 2013.

Vidar and Vale was about to launch in 2015 but we had to stop the production. Two different “concrete-companies” tried to mould the cabinets but made a poor job.

Nowadays we molder ourselves. The time inbetween we used to make the Vidar and Vale even better. Much work were put internally both in crossoverdesign, but also making the cabinet even more “dead”.

Spring 2019 we showed the new editions at a HiFi-show in Sweden, where the Vidar and Vale was the cheapest loudspeakers played, but performing among the best with “modest” electronics.

In spring 2022 our flagship model Oden was released. We also celebrates 40 years as a brand!
In 2023 our Valhalla, a mix of Oden and Vale was released.

The legend continues.

Martin and Lennart Niklasson, Rauna of Sweden AB 

The technique behind Rauna

It is not a coincidence that Rauna looks and are build in the way they are. Everything is practically done to perform as natural and uncoloured as possible.

Cabinet:
The actual "box" is made of a special kind of concrete, all made in Sweden.

For the loudspeakercabinet this means remarkably less vibrations than other materials, and we have also made a special kind of damping inside the box that reduces high-frequenzy resonanses to a minimum. The actual cabinett only purpose is to have a certain volume and not to add any own vibrations.The music/movie-sound should be delivered as natural and uncoloured as possible, which the cabinets of Rauna really manage.

The format of the cabinet is acoustically "thought through" and the unregular shape mimimizes the risk of "standing waves", inside the box.

The frontpart has a 15 degrees leaning to make the treble and bass-unit aligned in the same phase. Meaning all sound is reaching the listener at the same time.

A mat of felt is covering the front that removes early refelctions and in the same time makes it looks nicer covering concrete-surface and parts of the drive-units.

In to the cabinet there are magnets moulded in to the cabinets holding the frontgrill to easy remove and attache again.

Imagine that the same cabinett would be made in wood as stable as the molded concrete. What would it cost? Would it even be possible?

Crossover:

For the crossover in our latest models and upgradekits, we have been developing for more than one year. Each crossover is than separately adjusted to every model.

The purpose of the crossover is to seamingless combine all the parts of a speaker to one solid performer. This is the hardest part where we have spent most of our time. The components are "hardwire" and from recognised Danish supplier Jantzen.

Driveunits:

The driveunits is of a splendid quality for the money. The bassdriver has a powerful wented magnet an de the basked is molded in metal. The actual cone is made of paper which sounds very accurate especially in the sensitive midrange, and thereafter we have coated it with a special glue to make it stiffer.

.The trebleunits we used are softdomes (fabric) ad with unusually good resolution and soundstage. In Oden it is a magnesium/aluminium tweeter in a midrange (coaxial) solution.