The Fifth Element

As a film title, Quantizing Hanson Hsu might not rank up there with Kissing Jessica Stein, but we work with what we have to work with. Hanson Hsu is the principal designer at Delta H Design, Inc., an acoustics and architecture firm based in Marina del Rey, California. Though he dabbles in some weird science, Hsu doesn't wear a white lab coat, literal or figurative. He's down-to-earth and personable, with a conversational style that evinces warm wit and a real love of music. At one point in our conversations, he exclaimed, "I get so much joy when things sound good."

"The Guitars of Rachel Rosenkrantz" is perhaps not quite as evocative a title as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Nevertheless, there are parallels. I met the young, French luthier through mutual friends, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that she is very serious about her art, and rather obsessive about her craft. Rosenkrantz studied art, architecture, and industrial design, and worked for some years designing commercial lighting fixtures and furniture. However, she let go of that career to start over from scratch as an apprentice to Daniel Collins, a builder of classical guitars. She recently opened her own custom shop, Atelier Rosenkrantz, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, sharing space with jazz-guitar builder Matt d'Ambrosio.

Were it my place to hand out awards for "The Most Forthright People in Audio," Michael Grace of Grace Design would be at the top of the list. Years ago, after I'd given stellar recommendations of Grace's 901 and m902 headphone-amplifier-DAC-line-stage models, I asked Grace if I could audition his full-rack–size, more fully featured m904 Stereo Monitor Controller. He told me that he didn't think that was necessary, because the m904's sound was extremely similar to the sound of the smaller m902—it just had a different feature set, and he believed that the additional features were not things that Stereophile readers were likely to need. That is the only case I can recall of a manufacturer's declining an offer of additional coverage in Stereophile.