Designer Hall of Fame

PHASE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY in Florida..another game changer.. they never get credit or acknowledged for inventing the worlds first ferrous oxide fluid filled tweeter in the late 1970's. The tweeter took speakers to a higher lever and vastly improved high frequency performance.

John Atkinson..give me a break. He became the very creature
that J. Gordon Holt detested. Around 1961 J. Gordon worked for High Fidelity magazine and was instructed to favor and write false reviews praising audio products from companies that had the largest annual advertising contracts in the magazine. Out of protest, he quit High Fidelity and founded Stereophile in 1962. During the 1990's, Vandersteen Speakers had the largest annual advertising contract in Stereophile with full size ads taking up the entire back cover every month. Yet during that time period Vandersteen speakers were absolute junk with cheap $ 26.00 tweeters cheap midrange and woofer drivers, cheap internal wire and cheap crossover networks. The speakers had loose bass, muddy midrange and would stress when pushed too hard. Vandersteens are better today but back in the 90's they were junk speakers geared towards budding audiophiles. John Atkinson wrote great reviews on their models and always listed them in recommended components. He portrayed a false image of Vandersteen to the public to maintain his large annual ad contract with Richard Vandersteen. Give Atkinson a big check and a large annual ad contract and more than likely your tin can with copper wire will make it to the "A" recommended components list in Stereophile as one of the best speakers of the year.

Has anyone mentioned Roy Allison yet? I am a major fanboy of his. His speakers are amazing. He really pushed the envelope by trying different things IMO. I wish the new Allison had managed thru this Deprecession.

At this moment I think I would like to mention:

David Berning
James Bongiorno
Nelson Pass
The guy from JuicyMusic (designed the Paragon preamps also, and others)..I forget his name now.

I think John Atkinson was mentioned as a joke. AFIK, he was never a designer of anything in audio that is notable...just a reviewer with technical knowledge. As for Audiozen's claims about reviewing, that's another whole contested topic in highend audio for discussion.