Interviews

If high-end audio were to carve its own Mt. Rushmore, whose faces would appear there—besides that of Stereophile founder J">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/66">J. Gordon Holt, of course? It's likely that no two audiophiles would ever come up with identical lists of subjects, but I wouldn't be surprised if they could agree on at least one name: Nelson">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1191pass">Nelson Pass.

Richard Sequerra was born in 1929 and raised in various parts of the US by his mother, who worked for the Department of State. By the time he was 20, he had launched a freelance career that has since spanned a wide range of technologies. During a stint at Marantz in the 1960s, he worked with Sidney Smith on that firm's famed Marantz 10B tuner, which was sold from 1964 through 1970. Subsequent products have included the Sequerra 1 tuner and the Metronome 7 loudspeaker, originally produced by Sequerra's firm Pyramid and now hand-assembled by its creator, who offers the most recent version via his websitehttp://www.sequerra.com">website;, for less than half what it cost through retail channels when Sam Tellig praised it in the July 2007 Stereophile. Sequerra's newest transducers—a self-amplified nearfield speaker and matching subwoofer designed for Internet music listening—remain in prototype form; he hopes to sell or license the designs rather than manufacture and market them himself.

Determined to find out more about Revel's">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/608revel">Revel's Ultima Salon2, I tracked down designer Kevin">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/390voecks">Kevin Voecks late on the second day of the 2008">http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008">2008 Consumer Electronic Show. I persuaded him to step outside the demonstration suite of Harman International Industries, Revel's owner, high atop the Las Vegas Hilton. We spent an hour chatting about Voecks's design goals for Revel's new flagship. I asked Kevin what had led his team at Revel to develop a new Ultima Salon loudspeaker after 10 years?

When Hong Kong–based music lover and electronics-equipment distributor Klaus Heymann (footnote 1), now 70, first began organizing classical-music concerts as a way to boost sales, he had no idea he would end up founding the world's leading classical-music label. But after starting a record-label import business and meeting his future wife, leading violinist Takako Nishizaki, the German-born entrepreneur sought a way to promote her artistry. First he founded the HK label, which specialized in Chinese symphonic music (including Nishizaki's recording of Butterfly Lovers, the famous violin concerto by Chen Gang). Next he established Marco Polo, a label devoted to symphonic rarities.

How many hi-fi professionals can say that they've designed at least one of every part of a complete recording system, from microphones to tape recorders to vinyl-disc-cutting electronics? Probably only Tim de Paravicini (footnote 1). Best known to audiophiles for his extraordinarily durable EAR valve amplifiers, Tim is also an electronics guru to the professional recording world. His global reputation today is based on more than four decades of making things better, building equipment that stands the test of time.

Our meeting was propitious and totally unexpected. The locus was Los Angeles' Sheraton Gateway Hotel last May, on which we had all descended for Home Entertainment 2006. As a contributor to Stereophile's Show">http://blog.stereophile.com/he2006">Show blog, my assignment was as liberal as they come: Go where you are drawn, listen as you will, and record your impressions.

Iván Fischer, founder and conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, has performed with many major orchestras and recorded for a number of major labels, most significantly with Philips, from 1995 to 2004. Fischer/BFO made the first multichannel orchestral recording for SACD, which Philips used as a demonstration disc for their first SACD players. I still treasure that disc—it demonstrates many of the advantages of the medium with a wide and varied program—but it has never been commercially released.