Jerry Kindela

Jerry Kindela  |  Nov 15, 2007  |  Published: Oct 15, 2007
Price-sensitive yet refined, sophisticated sound.

Paul Barton doesn't merely talk about Canada's National Research Council; he preaches about the facility, acting as the Billy Graham for Canadian scientific research. And well he should. The NRC was founded to provide scientific, practical, and developmental support to Canadian companies wishing to compete in a global economy. Barton began using the NRC's facilities and its scientific minds in 1974, just two short years after he launched a modest little speaker company called PSB. Within a year, PSB released the Avante, the first speaker the company designed with the NRC's help. Since then, Barton has continued to design well-received and well-reviewed speakers, each delivered with assistance from the NRC facilities.

Jerry Kindela  |  Jul 23, 2007
Pushing the technology envelope.

Founded in early 1972 by Ivor Tiefenbrun, Scottish manufacturer Linn Products has consistently been on the cutting edge of audio development and delivered products that have enamored many audiophiles. Just think of the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, the Sondek CD12 compact-disc player, or even the Komponent speaker system that Michael Trei reviewed in these pages (in the March 2006 issue). Linn has routinely pushed the boundaries and treaded ahead of the manufacturing pack. Case in point: the Chakra range of amplifiers, which rely on switch-mode power supplies, plus other proprietary developments on the audio-circuit side.

Jerry Kindela  |  Feb 14, 2006  |  Published: Feb 15, 2006
A combination that hits all the right notes (and sounds).

There's a compelling magic that has kept my butt on the sofa— it's the enthralling And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself. It was for no small reason that this HBO film earned an Emmy for sound editing. The width and depth of the soundscape, the detailed sound bits, the way the dialogue comes through, and the score's ability to underscore the power and poignancy of scene after scene are remarkable. Each of these turns a made-for-TV movie into a film that transcends the limitations of the home venue for which it was created. And the system I've been using—an Epos M Series 5.1 speaker setup powered by the Butler Audio TDB 5150 vacuum-tube power amplifier—reveals such wonderful nuances in Pancho Villa that I have been completely glued to the couch.

Jerry Kindela  |  Feb 15, 2005
The thrill of exotics.

The Radia Series speaker system is the latest development from what can be considered a seriously thick branch in the speaker-manufacturing tree. You may not be too familiar with the Bohlender-Graebener name; but, when it comes to hybrid planar magnetic driver technology, the name isn't uttered without a good deal of respect.

Jerry Kindela  |  Aug 19, 2004  |  Published: Aug 01, 2004
This home theater system only seems like the new kid on the block.

In 1984, Ole Witthoft found the state of the speaker art wanting. To his ears, most speakers suffered in two fundamentally intertwined ways: One, they didn't present the details of sound in a way that, two, led you to sense the music's feeling and passion. So, like so many entrepreneurs who try to fill the void in a marketplace based on their own perceptions, Witthoft launched System Audio, using these composite criteria as his mission statement.

Jerry Kindela  |  Dec 27, 2000  |  Published: Dec 28, 2000
The MartinLogan hybrid electrostatic speaker system delivers a distinctive aural panorama that throws you into the movies.

A core tenet of stellar home theater reproduction calls for a system's ability to re-create infrasonic bass—the kind that drops so low that you no longer hear it, but you can feel it throughout the length of your alimentary canal. The kind of bass that threatens to shatter your gallstones. Of course, getting this kind of gut-whomping bass is relatively easy today, depending on your room's resonance nodes and the amount of greenbacks you can muster for the purchase of a foundation-rattling subwoofer.

X