Aretai

Two unique personalities sharing the passion for creation of outstanding sound and design products founded Aretai in the year 2018. It became a logical step when Jānis Irbe finished now award-winning Contra 350F prototype noting “nothing bothers me here anymore, sonically”. The passion to build the loudspeakers emerged after multiple visits of High-End Munich Show and urge to create something that differs from what was on offer in the show at the time.

After the sound of Contra 350F was perfected in the prototype,  countless design itterations were conducted with Edgars Zvirgzdiņš until we arrived at a solution that now is the base for all of the Aretai Contra collection speakers. The series received Red Dot Design Award in 2022.

Since high-school Jānis Irbe was known for his sound improvement passion through modifications of commercial products, then creating his own by realizing that it brings much greater listener experience improvement potential. The practical lab experiments and measurements were catalyzed with theoretical knowledge from renowned literature on speaker design, acoustics and psychoacoustics, as well as AES papers.

Edgars Zvirgzdiņš has 15 years of design experience acquired by founding an award winning design agency after graduating  from University of Brighton. He is focused on a non-compromise approach to design by reducing visual noise as much as possible towards minimalist elegance.