Sidebar II
Background of staff by Victor Comerchero
Joseph Chow has been an audiophile since he was a teenager. For as long as he can remember, he has wanted to be an audio engineer. His first engineering job over 25 years ago was with Kenwood in the FM Tuner division where he played a role with Japanese engineers in engineering the KT 7500, KT-615 and other receivers in Taiwan (Kenwood's high-end tuners were all developed in Japan and not at Kenwood Taiwan). His specialty was small signal processing, a specialty that permits him to reach surprisingly high S/N figures with small signals. After leaving Kenwood, he worked at Proton where he worked with Larry Schotz on the Schotz design used in Nakamichi's high-end tuners. FM tuners are a specialty of his and he has a genuine interest and curiosity about them. Later, he was a designer and consultant for Soundstream Electronics, one American high-end home and car audio manufacturers and for one of the American high-end cable manufacturers where some of his designs retailed for as much as $2000. In addition, he has also done original electronic design for Wurlitzer and a number of other Asian and American companies.


Audio Horizons grew by accident as the product of some hobby designs and the offshoot of Joseph's venture into audio modification in 2005. As a result of upgrading even very expensive audio components, Joseph discovered that inherent design flaws made it impossible even after the upgrade to get the kind of performance one had a right to expect. Not understanding the market or its size, Joseph's first designs were DACs. Only after he developed a tube preamplifier, the TP 2.0 (which has now evolved into the 2.1), did he begin to develop a band of devoted followers. Today, Audio Horizons manufactures a tube preamplifier, the TP 2.1; a tube phono stage, the TP 8.0; a tube DAC, the TD 3.0; and a tube buffer stage, the TB 5.0. Next up is a tube amplifier but that is not expected until late 2008 or early 2009. Like all businesses, which have grown haphazardly out of a hobby and are thus undercapitalized, Audio Horizons has been largely an exercise in trial and error and is entirely dependent on favorable word of mouth for the superiority of its products and the quality of its service.


Victor Comerchero is a retired university professor who bought his first high-fidelity system almost 60 years ago (an Electrovoice horn speaker, Scott integrated tube amp and a Garrard changer) with the money he saved from his after-school job. He has remained an audiophile ever since. Recognizing early what a remarkable designer Joseph Chow was, he began helping Joseph get his infant business off the ground, acting part time as both Director of Marketing and Customer Relations Manager. So far it has worked pretty well, probably because as Joseph says, "they were both born in the year of the sheep."


Misc. sheepish research from Stephaæn discovers more famous sheep: Mark Twain, Rudolph Valentino, Barbara Walters and Orville Wright. Sheep characteristic are wise, gentle, compassionate, charming, elegant, slightly materialistic, quick to complain, shy and pessimistic. Good career choices for sheep are: actor; gardener and beachcomber.