Honorary Member – Lawrence Lin

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Honorary Member of the GTAA: Mike Sastra, Vice President of Audio Classics Ltd

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Listening to music is a lifelong passion of Mike’s. It started with his Mom when he was just a kid, she always had music playing morning till night in the house or in the car. At age 8 he swept the floor’s and emptied the garbage at the local music store to earn enough to buy his first hifi system, a early stereo setup with detachable fold out speakers. His mom realized how much he enjoyed listening to music, so on his fourteenth birthday she bought him a Lafayette integrated amplifier and tuner with separate speakers. Over the years he developed an affinity for panel speakers and owned several from Magnapan, Acoustat, Sound Labs and Martin Logan. He would pair these speakers with various amplifiers including Krell, Levinson and Counterpoint trying to get it right. Then in 1989, while working a full-time job, Mike began helping out part time at Audio Classics until Steve mentioned he was looking for full time help in sales & shipping. From this point his hobby turned into a job and still is his hobby to this day. In addition to sales, Mike specializes in physical detailing and mechanical functions of pre-owned equipment. He also evaluates new audio products as they are introduced and performs critical listening trials to pair components that work well together. There is always music playing somewhere in his house from one of his McIntosh systems, this must run in the family.

 

 

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Honorary Member of the GTAA: Jeff Dorgay, Publisher of TONEAudio

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Jeff’s wacky world of hifi started at age 13, when he build a very primitive tube amplifier
in electronics class his first year of high school. Knowing it could sound better, started an
endless quest for a great system, which he thinks is finally pretty much in place.Working as an advertising photographer for nearly 20 years and being a very early adopter
of digital imaging technology helped build the foundation for TONE. A seven year detour creating
fine art images of Porsche cars and Ducati motorcycles fine tuned his eye for detail.After writing over 500 product reviews in the digital imaging world for C-Net, Macworld,
The Robb Report and many other publications, the call went out to Robert Harley and the dream
of writing about audio began. A year later, the confines of TAS were outgrown and TONE began.
The rest of this is history.Today, I spend almost all of my time pursuing audio, making my system better, making TONE better
and bringing my new projects (The Audiophile Apartment, My Stereo Habit and a few others) to
fruition. I also love automobiles, reading, tennis (when I have time) and travel with my wife
Pamela.

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Honorary Member of the GTAA: Simon Au, VP of TAVES (Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show)

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A word from Simon:

Where did this hobby all come about? It all started when a family friend was in the transition of moving to a new place and needed a temporary place to store his so called “STEREO”. That was the moment, the trigger to this hobby was the sight of a pair of Magneplanars. It was my first encounter into high fidelity. I couldn’t believe how real George Michael sounded singing Careless Whispers. Those were the days! Through the years I’ve tested and played with my share of audio equipment from high powered amps, tube preamps, monitors, and floor standing speakers … but as satisfying as it is, the best part of this hobby is being part of the GTAA Club and sharing this hobby with unique individuals with the same interest.

My minimalist system

300B Integrated Amplifier (Custom)
EL84 Integrated Amplifer (Custom)
Sonic Frontiers SFT-1 Transport
Sonic Frontiers SFD-2MK2 DAC
ADL Stratos DAC Headphone Amplifier
HiFi Man HE6 & Grado PS-1000e Headphones
Mundorf/Accuton 30 Anniversary MA30 Monitor Speakers
Cables by Furutech, Zavfino 1877Phono, Audio Sensibility