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RG: Gemme audio became a reality two years ago. Like most businesses, we started out from our respective basements with pocket change, a vision and long unpaid hours. The "loading docks" were the front doors, and when 50 ft trucks came to deliver parts and pick up crates, we somehow knew we had to move Gemme elsewhere... So we moved to a 6000 square feet facility in Montreal Garment district, where we have R&D, production, warehousing, wood shop and assembly on one floor, and a 1000 square feet paint shop on another floor. CNC machining is outsourced to two facilities nearby. Jean-Pierre and I are the founders of the company. Later on, Michel Veillette joined the group as CFO, along with other partners.

Design, production and assembly are all done in or near Montreal. Raw materials and parts come from Canada, USA, Italy, Denmark, China, Taiwan and Thailand. We have our own acoustic lab where we perform research, development and quality control, and also use the National Research Centre acoustic lab from time to time.

 DF: How'd you get your name, and are there any other common references (GA, Gemme, The Gems...)?

RG: Gemme is a french word defining precious stones or materials such as diamonds, pearls or other fine minerals (Topaz, Saphire, etc.). In order to be called a "gemme" a mineral must be hard, durable, beautiful, rare. In english, "Gem" has a more diffuse meaning, but the analogy is adequate.

DF: What product is currently your pride and joy?

RG: Without a doubt the VFlex loading. It's not a product, but a loading technology that allows our products to dig deeper and with more control and less distortion than any other loudspeaker equipped with the same drivers. My favorite product is the Vivace because it defies common sense.

DF: Any products win any awards?

RG: StereoMojo Best New Speaker.

DF: What kind of materials do you use in your speaker construction (woods, connectors, etc.)?

RG: This could fill pages! We use many types of materials. Wood (and byproducts) is one of them, but always in a composite form (i-e plywood with presswood with MDF with HDF in all possible combinations, in latex or neoprene sandwich, etc.). We also use copper, brass, steel, aluminium, leather, bonded leather, cotton, wool, felt, etc. We use almost exclusively Cardas binding posts, DH Labs Copper/Silver wires, WBT solder, etc. Wood is very nice to work with, but we also experiment with other materials such as carbon fiber, fiberglass, polycarbonate, copper foam, lexan, Corian, etc.

DF: How does your VFlex compare to an average consumer speaker like a Sony or Polk?

RG: All leading manufacturers (or marketers or packagers) work on a WSIWYG basis (What you see is what you get). With the VFlex products, the motto is what you get isn't what you see. The visible part is a tiny fraction of what's happening inside and the only way to compare our products with Sony or Polk is to rip them apart - OR listen to both. Sony and Polk (and numerous other) have very talented engineers, but they are not allowed to decide what goes to market or not. Shareholders expect profits, so cost must be low and selling price must be high. You can only imagine what's happening to cost when price is already low!  I'm an important shareholder of Gemme Audio and at the same time chief engineer so what goes to market has been approved by JP and yours truly. If we're not happy with something, it stays in the prototypes room.

DF: How does your horn technology compare to other horn manufacturers?

RG: We did not invent horn technology. We see technology as a global playing field. The beauty with horn technology is that it didn't change much over the last 100 years or so. Any horn is only as good as how it's implemented. A horn is a natural amplification device. If what's ahead is not perfect, or the implementation unperfect, you only get amplified defects. The keyword is amplification, and it was the starting point for the VFlex. We used horn loading to get free gain, and somehow distilled that gain in a different form using acoustic design.

DF: How do you defend the VFlex against the member calling the system a fraud for producing 20Hz with a 3" driver?

RG: We do not have to defend the VFlex. It's real, it exists and it works. 20Hz bass was not a goal, it was a welcomed byproduct. You won't see VFlex subwoofers from Gemme Audio because VFlex is only there to provide a musical foundation and to allow the driver to reduce distortions higher up in the mid frequencies.

I like to watch David Blaine on TV. I find him very entertaining and obviously his magic tricks are - well, just tricks! But I won't run down the street shouting that Blaine is a fraud, because we know the

illusionist job is to create illusion. Our Vivace fullrange loudspeaker uses a single 3 in. driver (2 7/8 to be precise) and yet reproduces bass in an "impossible" way. However, anyone can get a pair, hook them up to an amp and get the same results. It's not about levitation or magic, it's about acoustic engineering. If it reproduces music in a magical way, we reached our goal.

In the Vivace case, most people assume that a tiny driver with a very limited excursion capacity (a fraction of one millimetre) just can't move enough air to reproduce any bass below 100Hz, and this is true. The "magic trick" is that the VFlex loading restricts the excursion over a wide frequency range so even if the cone doesn't move and stays within its limit, the driver works incredibly hard. Another way to look at it is that a drumstick can't produce any bass by itself, but if it strikes a bass drum with enough force, the drum will produce bass. Again, people should not assume that the Vivace (or any other VFlex) is just a driver in a box, because the inside of the box is much more elaborate than what you see on the outside.

DF: What's on the horizon for Gemme Audio?

RG: First of all, we are working at producing enough loudspeakers to meet the demand. So far, every single loudspeaker in production is already sold. We should introduce a whole line of VFlex products in the coming months. We are also working of some very efficient designs using custom made drivers.