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Jeff Rowland tour fascinates

I had the pleasure to meet and tour Mr. Rowland's longtime facilities in Colorado yesterday . As the owner of his very latest gear I already had a sense of the unparalleled build and sound quality of his gear but found the most impressive item to be his personal attention to every facit of his company. For instance if you buy a JRDG unit it has been personally engineered and assembled by him. My overall impression was that his company and gear is akin to what you see from the Swiss among others without the excessive cost of say Dartzeel, which I have owned and greatly admire but is in no way superior to the Rowland gear. Frankly prior to this meeting I had concerns about JRDG because they are a "quiet" company continually moving forward without fanfare. Anyway to close out this thread I must say that his demo using his Aeris dac decoding 44.1 material driving his amps was simply awesome. Truly.. I don't post much and have no agenda at all other than to relay this interesting day to any audiophiles who may be interested. Jeff said that he only wished thatbhe could work less than the ten hours a day plus that he is now enduring. A special company and man I think.
4425
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,424 posts
 
27 years of building superb amplifiers in Colorado. I enjoy the smallest of his creations Model 102 dreaming about Model 625 in the future. I've also heard that he is a classy guy.
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,930 posts
 
I met him once at a show in NYC. I recognized him, and introduced myself. I was a little flustered, but he was gracious and friendly.
4425,
Are you saying that he assembles every component himself? That would seem impossible.
vicdamone
850 posts
 
Thanks for sharing.

"I have owned and greatly admire but is in no way superior to the Rowland gear."

Very interesting assessment, good for you. During the demo what kind of speakers were being used and did you see any other speakers at the facility?
4425 OP
861 posts
 
In fact Mr. Rowland personally is involved with the assembly of each unit sold. How is this possible? I asked him about his personal involvement etc and time involved and his only regret was that he couldn't get his workload under ten hours a day. I was shocked assuming a declining two channel mkt but the high end Asian mkt keeps him cranking day and night. I have to say that calling cold and meeting Jeff makes me feel very good about his gear and that I own something special and enduring. Funny thing about audio companies if you've been around long enough as I have. A few want to mesh aesthetics and sound as exemplified by JRDG which entails lower margins and higher production costs while others present clearly more austere gear that purportedly "serves the music first" while providing more profit to themselves at the expense of the consumer. It's not hard to know who these companies are. Anyway not to be a cheerleader which is not my intention I got a glimpse of the best of American high end audio that was compelling. As a note to an inquiry Mr Rowland was using Revel Salon 2's in his demo room. The sound was breathtaking.
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