Every five years Danish speaker company Dynaudio puts out a special model. The most successful it ever did was on its 25th anniversary with the Special 25. It was a bookshelf speaker that, although small, packed considerable wallop. This year the company turns 40 and its anniversary edition is another bookshelf, the Special Forty. It's a two-way speaker with a 17-cm woofer and a soft dome tweeter coated with DSR – Dynaudio Secret Recipe. Both drivers have been developed exclusively for it.

The local distributor is pretty excited about it and put on a trip to the factory at Skanderborg, three hours west of Copenhagen, for his key dealers. A factory tour and a listen to the newie. He asked me if I'd like to come along, his shout. Having established that I'd get to listen to the new product, that I'd be able to take photographs throughout the factory and the new research and development centre, and talk to senior management, I agreed. This is unusual for me because I dislike travel, but I do like the Dynaudio product and philosophy, and he was very enthusiastic.

So after a day in economy class I was in Skanderborg and everything I'd heard about Dynaudio proved true. Most speakers these days are made either in whole or in part in China. Lots of audio companies are based in Europe, but very few of them actually make their stuff in Europe any longer, although a few keep their high-end production close to home. But Dynaudio makes every speaker it sells right there. It's one of the few factories where raw materials go in one end and speakers come out the other.

And it gives the company an ability that those which outsource manufacture usually don't enjoy. When the people in R&D have a good idea they can build a single speaker and hear what it sounds like. Out-sourcers have to call their supplier and detail the tweak they want to make. And the supplier says, sure, how many thousand do you want?

They also get total control over manufacture. For example, despite making 80,000 speakers a year, most containing multiple drivers, every driver Dynaudio makes is tested by a person before it goes into a speaker. The highest failure rate is with woofers — between two and four per cent — and they're junked. It makes me wonder if the people who use automated lines pick up such failures. I mean, before they get to the customers.

The first thing you notice about this factory is the high number of people in it, and that's because many of the processes and manufacturing tolerances are too fine for automation. There's a firm belief here in the ability of patient women with delicate hands. When the company was approached by a major car manufacturer to supply speakers for all its models the manufacturing tolerances specified were, in the parlance of Dynaudio, generous. So generous they could be automated. So they were.

As the bus is waiting I finally get to listen to a pair of Special Forties, likely to be priced somewhere between $4500 and $5000 a pair. But I only get a few minutes sitting on a footstool off-centre in a crowded room and people are talking throughout. And they are immediately followed by a pair of tall floor-standers costing $125,000 that completely wash away my aural memory of the Special Forties. So I'll have to get back to you when they arrive here.

How can a company this fastidious in its manufacture be so cavalier in its demonstrations? Beats me.