This is the first of a three-part “Tour of Italian Audio” video series.
Back in May of this year, right after the Munich High-End Audio show, I got a chance to travel with some other audio journalists to visit three Italian audio companies. The companies were: Unison Research/Opera Loudspeaker, Gold Note, and Audia Flight/Alare Labs. These companies are distributed in the USA by Fidelity Imports, and they hosted us for this trip. We were told that there was no expectation to write any articles or produce any reports, just come, look, listen, and experience these three companies.
Well, needless to say, we had a great time, and each of these manufacturers brings something truly special to the table concerning HiFi. I’m just lucky it’s not possible to get fat listening to amazing Italian audio as it is when consuming amazing Italian food, but I digress…
This first video has a little bit of an introduction, and then it jumps into covering our first visit, Unison Research, and Opera Loudspeakers. I hope you enjoy the video.
Carlo Lo Raso
Editor-In-Chief
Secrets of Home Theater and High-Fidelity
Carlo Lo RasoA native of Toronto Canada, Carlo's interest in audio began at a young age when, unbeknownst to his mother, he started taking apart her numerous transistor radios to see how they worked. This desire for “knowledge through deconstruction” continued through to the family’s 8-track tape player, turntable, headphones, and speakers. Carlo subsequently spent a lot of time in his room.
Toronto was a fertile ground for Hi-Fi in the 1970s and 80s and Carlo spent much of his wayward youth hanging out in downtown Toronto stereo shops, listening to all manner of gear and picking the brains of the various store owners. Through that formative experience, Carlo developed an appreciation for good music and good sound reproduction. Also, as a budding graphic artist, the aesthetic aspects of a given piece of gear became increasingly of interest to his eyes. It was at about that time as well that Carlo began purchasing “Audio Magazine” on a regular basis and came to appreciate, in particular, the writing and reviewing of the late Leonard Feldman. Later on, he was also influenced by the writing and observations of the staff at Sound and Vision Canada, helmed at the time by Alan Loft.
Carlo graduated from Sheridan College with a degree in Classical Animation and was subsequently employed by Walt Disney Consumer Products for 10 years as a Character Artist and Art Director. Having become disenchanted with Los Angeles, he then decided to strike out on his own. Carlo started his own company and has been freelancing artwork, from his home studio, primarily for the toy and publishing industries since 2001.
In 2013, on a bit of a lark, Carlo answered a “Call for Writers” ad from an AV website that he had been regularly reading for about 5 years called Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. He had come to appreciate the website’s combination of subjective impressions along with the objective bench-testing available in several of the reviews. The “B-Team” must have been working that day because by some miracle he was hired as a writer and his first review for the site was published early in 2014. Carlo has been continually writing, editing, traveling, listening, and learning on the company’s behalf ever since.
Carlo currently lives in Granville, Ohio with his wife, two sons, and a very old, but chill dachshund.
