Matt Thomas's hi-fi business has always been personal. He wants to keep it that way—in his curated, personalized sales approach, in choosing esoteric gear to carry, and in his listening preferences and not wanting to get too big.

A health crisis was the catalyst for Matt Thomas to start Hearken Audio: A back injury caused temporary paralysis. "For lack of a better word, it was an experience," he told me in a recent phone conversation. He's now fully recovered, but the experience changed him. He decided to pursue his passion. He was already an avid audiophile and music lover; he had been for years. After the accident, almost five years ago, he started Hearken Audio, a home-based dealership in Kitchener, Ontario, where he lives with his wife and two teenage daughters.

Two albums with the same title, by the same artist, basically released one week apart on the same planet? Even considering the dubious history of music-biz capers and catastrophes, the Lights on a Satellite kerfuffle is hilariously surreal. By the time it was discovered, covers were already printed and records were already pressed. It's so bizarre that it's tempting to suspect intergalactic powers were involved. Could the ghost of that interstellar traveler, Master Sun Ra, who thought space was the place, have had a hand in this unlikeliest of Saturnian conjunctions?

Fortunately, the two versions of Lights on a Satellite are very different.

Totem Acoustic was founded in 1987, in Montreal, Canada, by a former high school math teacher named Vince Bruzzese. The company's first product, the Model 1 loudspeaker, impressed me so much I bought a pair.

These little boxes steered the music straight into my brain—just like Quads and Snells...Today, those speakers look and sound like vintage pipe-and-slippers standmounts. This is especially true when compared to Totem Acoustic's brand-new Element Fire V2. Totem's new Fire looks Maybach-level glossy, and windswept, and trés moderne, but also smart and down-to-business, as befits its made-in-Canada roots.