The history of Audiopoli

Audiopoli was founded in the autumn of 1997. In the early days the idea was to bring like-minded students of technology together, and the activities consisted mostly of movie nights, for which top-of-the-line equipment was borrowed from partners. Movie nights were held at Smökki among other places, and the longest movie marathons ran for over 70 hours. The traditional loudspeaker projects soon joined the picture as well. Well over a hundred Audiopoli 1.0 bookshelf speakers were built over the course of a couple of years.

Alongside the hi-fi hobby, Audiopoli made a name for itself in other pursuits too. The boldest prank ideas in Otaniemi were born among the Audiopoli crowd. After winning the Otaniemi prank competition, Audiopoli went on to the national competition organised by TEK, appearing there in 2000 as the Trawled Saimaa Ringed Seals, among other things. For a couple of years the Audiopoli board even had a dedicated prank officer. Dozens of ideas piled up over the years, and the best ones are still waiting to be carried out.

At some point organising movie nights started to become a chore because of all the equipment hauling, and the idea of Kinopoli was born. During 2003 a 20-seat cinema was built in the basement of OK20. Ever since it was completed, the cinema has also been rented out at modest prices to other associations and groups of friends. Audiopoli's activities came to centre largely on Kinopoli.

After the turn of the millennium, loudspeaker projects became an annual autumn tradition. In addition to the Audiopoli 1.0 bookshelf speaker, the Proac 2.5 floorstander project – organised twice – proved popular. Kinopoli's enormous main speakers (the "Cows") are the product of a slightly more unusual project. Over Audiopoli's first 10 years, more than 400 loudspeakers were built.

In 2007 Kinopoli was given a fresh start. A renovation carried out in cooperation with the Ecophon Group made the cinema acoustically excellent and an altogether more presentable space. Kinopoli's web-based booking system was also introduced that autumn, and the number of bookings shot up.

Read more about the history of Kinopoli.