John Atkinson

It was a classic American tale: hearing that the head honcho of RadioShack was in town, the principals of Oregon-based high-end loudspeaker manufacturer Linaeum found out where he was staying and called him to see if RadioShack would be interested in marketing their speakers. They were rewarded for their daring by being given an introduction to the right RadioShack department head, and before you could say time-coherent, a deal was struck for RadioShack to manufacture a new line of three "audiophile" loudspeakers featuring a version of the unique Linaeum tweeter. The less-expensive Optimus Pro X77 and LX4 models use a baffle-mounted tweeter that radiates just to the front; the top-of-the-line Optimus Pro LX5 reviewed here mounts a bi-directional tweeter on the top of a diecast aluminum enclosure.

Among the terrible news coming out of the Gulf states these past few days, we heard the sad news that Gary Warzin, one of the co-founders, with Tony Gregory, of high-end distribution company Audiophile Systems, had died on Saturday August 27 at just 56. Audiophile Systems had grown to prominence in the 1970s and '80s marketing Linn components in the US, and after Linn had set up their own distribution, had worked hard to establish the Arcam and dCS brands in the US. We reproduce below the email we received from Audiophile Systems, telling us of the news, but I'd like to offer my own memory of someone whose abilities as a serious expert on marketing—he was a Disney Fellow—were matched by his penchant for practical jokes:

Canadian company Paradigm has made a name for itself over the past 20 years with affordably priced, high-performance loudspeakers. Its Reference Series designs have garnered much praise from this magazine—I was well impressed by the floorstanding Series 3 Reference Studio/100 ($2300/pair) last January, my review following hard on the heels of Kalman Rubinson's enthusiastic recommendation of the smaller Studio/60 v.3 ($1600/pair) in December 2004, while the bookshelf Reference Studio/20 ($800/pair) has been a resident of Stereophile's "Recommended Components" listing ever since Bob Reina's original review in February 1998.

Not every interesting audio component gets a full review in Stereophile. Many more products are covered in Sam Tellig's, Art Dudley's, Michael Fremer's, Kal Rubinson's, and John Marks' regular columns than I have the space to publish measurements for. However, I do ask for samples of products that I feel deserve to be measured, particularly when our original coverage raised more questions than it answered.