Weaving your sound

Custom headphone cables and mods, built by hand on a bench in Tallinn. Here is how that bench came to exist, and the myth we borrowed the name from.

How it started

Albert Lacueva spent his youth taking headphones apart to see what made them sound the way they did, then putting them back together a little better. The tinkering never stopped. It turned into a habit, then into a skill worth paying for.

Friends in the music world started asking. Could he repair a worn cable, re-wire a pair of headphones, make something that would survive life on a stage. He could, and word travelled. What began as favours became a waiting list, and the waiting list became a business.

Arachne Audio started in a spare room in Barcelona, one person and a soldering iron. It outgrew that room quickly. We moved the whole operation to Tallinn, a city with a serious musical heritage and a tech industry to match, and settled into a proper workshop. It was here that the one-person operation grew into a small team. We have built in Tallinn ever since.

The name, and the myth

Arachne comes from the Ancient Greek word for spider. As the Roman poet Ovid told it two thousand years ago, she was a mortal weaver, daughter of Idmon the dyer, and good enough at her craft to challenge Athena, goddess of wisdom and weaving, to a contest.

Arachne's tapestry was flawless. Athena could not bear to lose to a mortal, and turned her into a spider, to weave for the rest of time.

after Ovid, Metamorphoses

A cautionary tale about pride, depending on who is telling it. We prefer the other reading: the work was good enough to rattle a god. If you want the full story, it is on the wiki page.

Why it fits

A cable is woven, strand by strand, by hand. The name was hard to resist. It also sets the bar we hold ourselves to: weave it well enough that the work speaks for itself.

Everything we make is built from premium components, by hand, and checked before it leaves the bench. Cables are braided and terminated one at a time. Mods mean knowing how a pair of headphones is put together and how to re-wire them for the cleanest possible signal, so the music arrives the way it was recorded.

Thank you for reading this far. Pour something you like, turn it up, and have a listen. That is what all of this is for.