A luthier family’s son, and a move to the sea.

Cabasse was founded in 1950 by Georges Cabasse (1928–2019), a musician from a family of string-instrument makers in the Vosges; the company says six generations of Cabasse luthiers worked there between the 18th and 19th centuries. He started the business with his wife, Élisabeth, under the name La Maison du Haut-Parleur, near Paris. The company’s English-language tribute places it in Neuilly-sur-Marne, while the Breton daily Le Télégramme, in its 2019 obituary, says Neuilly-sur-Seine, so we note both. The company says the business began by repairing and exchanging loudspeakers.

Its first break came in the cinema. Cabasse says that in 1952 it built the Diphone, a 36 cm coaxial loudspeaker, for the Grand Rex in Paris, the first French cinema equipped for CinemaScope; Le Télégramme dates the Grand Rex installation to 1953.

Cabasse was not founded in Brittany, whatever later press releases suggest. According to Le Télégramme, in 1959 the couple wrote to towns along the coast between La Rochelle and Dunkirk because, as Élisabeth Cabasse later told the paper, “Georges absolutely wanted to live near the sea” (our translation); Georges Lombard, then mayor of Brest, was the first to reply. The company’s own tribute gives the move as around 1958. Production started in Brest’s Kergonan industrial zone and moved in 2003 to a site at Plouzané, just west of the city. Cabasse says it built there one of the largest anechoic chambers in the world; we give that as its claim.

The roles were divided, the paper says: Élisabeth Cabasse ran the commercial side and took the brand abroad, while her husband preferred to stay out of public life. Georges Cabasse died in November 2019, aged 91.

Coaxial drivers, from the Grand Rex to La Sphère.

Cabasse built its name on the coaxial loudspeaker, in which drivers for different frequency bands share one axis so that the sound comes from a single point. English Wikipedia’s timeline, largely uncited, lists active loudspeakers with valve amplifiers in 1958 and underwater loudspeakers for the French Navy in 1965. The company says its Brigantin and Galion active three-way monitors of 1974 were made to equip the studios of Radio France.

Large public commissions followed. English Wikipedia says Cabasse supplied drivers for the 12-channel system at La Géode, the Omnimax cinema at the Parc de la Villette in Paris, which opened in 1986; Le Télégramme dates that work to 1984. In 1998, the paper says, the nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was fitted with Cabasse technology. Its home models long carried sea and boat names — Clipper, Sampan, Ketch, Sloop, Galiote — a habit noted by English Wikipedia and still visible in current names such as Baltic, Antigua, Minorca and Santorin.

In the 1990s the company developed what it calls the Spatially Coherent System, built around three-way coaxial drivers; it dates its Atlantis, a “quadri-coaxial” speaker, to 1993, while English Wikipedia gives 1992. The best-known result is La Sphère, a spherical four-way coaxial speaker presented at CES in Las Vegas in January 2006 and released, English Wikipedia says, in 2007, after Cabasse engineers set out the theory in papers for the Audio Engineering Society. French Wikipedia calls it the world’s first four-way coaxial loudspeaker, a description that rests on the company’s and the trade press’s accounts. In 2015 the Baltic 4 introduced what the company calls its first tri-coaxial aramid driver.

From 2013 Cabasse moved into streaming, starting with the Stream 1, its first Wi-Fi speaker, the company says. In October 2018 it launched The Pearl, a spherical active speaker with built-in room correction, at €2,790, Le Figaro reported; French Wikipedia says it won a Diapason d’or in 2020. The smaller Pearl Akoya followed in 2019 and received StereoNET’s Applause Award, and in 2021 the Pearl Pelegrina marked the brand’s 70th anniversary, Les Numériques reported.

French hi-fi and the record.

France has a long record in audio. Elipson, founded in 1938, is described by French Wikipedia as the country’s oldest high-end loudspeaker brand, and Cabasse, founded by Georges Cabasse in 1950, moved to Brest around 1960, the company says. Later came Focal, founded by Jacques Mahul in 1979 in the Saint-Étienne area which Belgium’s Barco agreed to buy, with Britain’s Naim, in 2026; the valve-amplifier maker Jadis, founded in 1983 and based near Carcassonne; Davis Acoustics, founded in 1986 and now in Troyes; and Devialet, founded in Paris in 2007.

Reviewing an Advance Paris CD player in 2025, Stereophile wrote: “Think French hi-fi and you think Focal, Triangle, Cabasse, Jadis, Devialet.” At home the trade gathers at the Paris Audio Video Show, held in October 2025 at the Palais des Congrès, and in magazines such as ON Mag.

The makers in this guide are spread across the country, according to their websites and the French company register: Cabasse at Plouzané, outside Brest; Triangle at Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, beside Soissons, in the Aisne; Elipson’s owner, AV Industry, at Champigny-sur-Marne, in the Val-de-Marne; Micromega, owned since 2021 by La Boite Concept, which assembles at Soorts-Hossegor, in the Landes; Atoll at Brécey, in Normandy; and Advance Paris in central Paris, with a design office at Brie-Comte-Robert.

YBA, named after its founder, Yves-Bernard André, is harder to place: China’s Shanling took a significant stake in it in 2009, What Hi-Fi? reported, and ON Mag wrote in 2025 that its products are designed in France but made under Shanling’s oversight.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Four owners in twenty years.

Ownership changed repeatedly. French Wikipedia says the company was sold three times in the 2000s, including to Canon in 2006; Le Télégramme says production was then transferred to Liffré, in Ille-et-Vilaine, and English Wikipedia says the business was led by the president of Canon’s factory in Brittany. In September 2014 AwoX, a Montpellier maker of connected bulbs and speakers that had listed on the stock market that April, bought Cabasse from Canon. Le Figaro reported a price of €4.5 million, of which €2 million was paid upfront and the rest spread over 2015 to 2018 — which explains why some reports give €2 million.

Under AwoX, production returned to Brittany. In 2016, Ouest-France reported, Cabasse brought high-end production and the customisation of finishes back to a workshop at its own site, and the company says its 2017 Murano Alto floorstander was assembled at Plouzané. We found no source saying that every Cabasse product is made in France. In 2020 AwoX sold its lighting business and renamed itself Cabasse Group, then Veom Group in 2022. In December 2022 Cabasse itself was listed on Euronext Growth in Paris, after Veom distributed 50.1 percent of its shares to its own shareholders and new capital was raised at €9.42 a share.

The listing did not stop the decline. Revenue fell from €9.29 million in 2023 to €6.73 million in 2024, according to company filings cited by French Wikipedia, and to €4.7 million in 2025, down about 30 percent, the magazine Haute Fidélité reported. Cabasse was placed in receivership in early 2026 — on 27 February according to Haute Fidélité, on 9 March according to other reports. On 20 April 2026 the Montpellier commercial court converted the case to liquidation and accepted the offer of Loewe Technology, the German television maker based in Kronach, reported at €400,000; Cabasse said 24 of its 27 jobs would be kept, and its shares are being removed from Euronext Growth. Loewe said Cabasse would keep its identity and its research, development and production in Brest. Its announcement also described Cabasse as founded in Brittany, which is not what the company’s own history says.

For a design guide, Cabasse shows how one technical idea — the coaxial driver, made spherical in La Sphère and The Pearl — can carry a brand through four owners. Compare Focal, another French loudspeaker maker, and Devialet, the Paris audio company. For this guide we use an Atlantic navy, white and a coral accent with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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