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Gerry Eschwieler- Sonotechnique
Gerry Eschwieler

Founded in 1980 by Jean-Louis Ostrowski and the late Paul Fleury, Sonotechnique has risen to become Canada's preeminent Professional Audio Distributor/ Importer. With offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, their reach across Canada is broad and each location is manned by experts who know the particulars of their region's industries. Plus, their product line is thoroughly comprehensive, with many important exclusives.

Grace Design began working with Sonotechnique about 6 years ago after meeting Mr. Gerry Eschweiler at the AES convention. It was clear to us from the start that Sonotechique was a perfect fit for representing our products in Canada. They are highly customer service oriented, maintain a highly knowledgeable staff and simply carry the best pro audio and broadcast gear. Grace Design has now become broadly recognized in Canada, and this is due mainly to Sonotechnique's commitment to developing our line in their country.

Any audio professional living and working in Canada owes it to themselves to become familiar with their regional Sonotechnique office - they won't be disappointed.So we have the honor to catch up with Mr. Gerry Eschweiler - current partner and our dear friend at Sonotechnique.Hi Gerry!

Can you give us the short history of Sonotechnique?
It was founded in 1980 (25 years ago) by my partners. Personally, we've all been in the Pro Audio industry since the early 70's. We currently have a staff of 20. I must say that we have the best group of people working for us!

What is your background in pro audio, and how did you get involved with Sonotechnique?
Going back to my roots, I was a musician which first got me interested in the recording side. In the 70's I worked at Long & McQuade Music Store in Toronto where I really started to learn about recording and a couple years later built a recording studio named "Round Sound" with 3 partners (still in business!). Soon after opening the studio I realized I didn't have the patience to be a recording engineer full time, so I pursued the Pro Audio industry from the equipment side of things. I worked at one of the premier Pro Audio Dealer/Distributors in the early 80's called "Gerr Electro Acoustics" which is when I learned about one of our stanch competitors named "Sonotechnique" I stayed in touch with them through the 80's as I ran Mitsubishi Pro Audio Group (the digital tape war years against Sony) and also Solid State Logic Canada until the beginning of the 90's. I finally realized that I should be working for my own business, so when I was invited to become a equal partner in Sonotechnique, I grabbed the opportunity! It was the best thing I ever did!

Sonotechnique is clearly one of the most successful professional audio outlets in Canada. What are some of the ingredients that have made you such a successful company in such a large market?
I think it's very basic... it's a combination of long time relationships with clients, excellent selection of some of the best manufacturer's products along with treating your client's with the same respect you would expect yourself.

What is the current state of the pro audio industry across Canada?
The pro audio market is quite good due to our stronger dollar against the US dollar...it has brought the prices down of all US products.

What types of clients are you mostly working with these days?
We actually work with all areas of the market but presently the broadcast market is the strongest.

Sonotechnique has had such remarkable success with promoting and selling Grace Design products. Can you give us a little insight into why you think this is?
Again, I think it's basic... the best products in its class offered at competitive pricing.

Any big projects and / or plans for Sonotechnique in the near future that you'd like to tell us about?
The largest project that we are currently working on is the upgrade of the operating software of all the CBC Radio sites across Canada..it will take over two years to complete.For more information about Sonotechnique, please visit http://www.sonotechnique.ca/

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Alliance Atlantis
Alliance Atlantis Chooses Grace m902’s

Alliance Atlantis, a broadcaster, creator and international distributor of filmed entertainment content, has taken delivery of eleven of the newly released Grace Design m902 reference headphone amplifiers/monitor controllers.

The company’s headquarters is based in Toronto, Canada. Each of the eleven units will be installed in the company’s newly upgraded edit suites and will be utilized as the primary systems for both headphone and stereo speaker reference monitoring. Grace Design’s Canadian distributor, Sonotechnique, handled the sale.

The m902 is a stereo reference headphone amp and monitoring controller housed in a 1U, half-rack enclosure whose industrial design mirrors that of the company’s m904 and m906 monitoring systems. The m902 provides balanced and unbalanced stereo analog inputs via rear panel XLR and RCA jacks. Both +4dBu and –10dBV analog sources are accommodated. A pair of front panel, parallel-wired ¼” TRS outputs are included to allow two headphone pairs to be used simultaneously.

The m902 also adds a pair of line outputs on the rear panel for connection to a stereo pair of monitors, allowing the system to also perform as a high-end system preamp. The m902 employs high-current, transimpedance output amplifiers optimized for driving even the lowest impedance headphones. A front panel rotary encoder provides precision level control of both headphone and line output levels and level adjustments are made in 0.5dB steps within a 95dB range. Channel to channel level matching is an amazingly low 0.05dB. AES3, S/PDIF and optical digital sources are accepted via rear-panel XLR, RCA and TOSLINK connectors respectively.

As an added convenience, a USB input (16-bit, 44.1 – 48kHz operation) is supplied for users who desire a reference quality listening experience while connected to their computer. A front panel rotary switch selects between all analog and digital sources, and a 4-LED array is provided to show valid digital source sample rates between 44.1 and 192kHz. A high performance 24-bit DAC, which includes Grace’s unique s-Locktm dual stage PLL (Phase Lock Loop) is utilized for conversion and provides exceptional results with extremely low intrinsic jitter.

“We had been using small format analog mixers for monitoring purposes in our edit suites but really needed to accommodate the various digital formats we regularly work with in addition to analog audio sources. It was important that whatever we ended up with could not only provide headphone monitoring but could also feed a pair of stereo monitors. We also were hoping to find a solution that had a small physical footprint.

Sonically, we required something that performed at a very high level. Gerry Eschweiler from Sonotechnique told me about a new product from Grace Design that he believed would work well for our application.” explained Serdar Alkin, Manager of Post Production and Studio Services Engineering at Alliance Atlantis. “Grace Design sent us a pre-production version of the m902 and it was exactly what we were looking for. We’ve recently received our new m902’s and we look forward to using them in our new edit suites” For more information on Alliance Atlantis, please visit www.allianceatlantis.com