In conversation with Louis Desjardins at Kronos Audio

The latest installment in our ongoing Audio Genius/Yarlung family member series

“Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.”

― Jean Michel Basquiat

Louis Desjardins combines the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, the intellectual rigor of a philosopher and the soul of a poet with his natural aptitude for mechanics. CEO and founder of Montreal’s KRONOS AUDIO, Louis is an extraordinary and multifaceted man by any definition. He also handcrafts some of the most bespoke and unique audio equipment on the planet.

Individuals fortunate to spend time with Louis are immediately struck with the man’s expansive interests. He is a maximalist and a delightful and erudite conversationalist too. Modest to a fault when speaking of his work, his quiet passion to create logical solutions to the challenges he sets for himself is expressed with an affecting lyricism, that seems almost at odds with the precision his products demand.

Louis was surrounded by music growing up and attended many concerts with his family. He attributes these youthful experiences with helping him develop his ear and more importantly established a reference how the ideal musical encounter should sound. Louis would go on to study physics at Concordia University, specializing in the propagation of waves and vibrations in various media and the mechanisms of resonance before earning an MBA in Business Administration. His mechanical aptitude found outlet in rebuilding racing motorcycles (still a passion) and electric guitars as a hobby. Given all these experiences, it almost seems inevitable that Louis would eventually be inspired to combine all his passions and develop what would become one of the most innovative turntables for vinyl record playback ever created.

Louis calmly stakes his claim as an audiophile. His passion is for the music, acknowledging “we are slaves to the quality of ear we have.” Like many audiophiles, Louis also bought into the “perfect sound forever” hype of cd playback in the early 80’s, and also like many of us, he got rid of most of his records a few years later. But in 2002 he bought a used turntable just to see what the rebirth of analog fuss was all about and he instantly realized how he had been missing the sound of “real” music. So he started tinkering with turntables and tonearms, modifying them, and trying to improve their designs to attain his sonic ideal.

A fearful symmetry burning bright!

So why vinyl and why analogue, especially when digital recording techniques have attained such an extraordinary high degree of sonic fidelity? In a blind listening test with high-quality equipment, the differences between the best digital and the best analog recordings can be subtle for some people, and far smaller than differences caused by microphone choice, room acoustics, or mixing decisions. But as Louis notes “records are like photographs of the time of the performance.” And for Louis, these sonic waves can best be captured as waves, rather than digital packets, and the best way to store these waves is in a continuous groove if one does not have the privilege of listening to the original analog tape.

Sem Of Grooves In Stereo Lp Record i- photograph by Dr Jeremy Burgess

There is a tidy logic to Louis’ thinking that is utterly seductive. Louis reminds us that all of these waves tucked away in grooves on a vinyl platter are utterly dependent upon the device responsible for making them audible once again. “For any audiophile or music enthusiast, the battle against unwanted vibrations is a critical aspect of ensuring pristine audio playback,” Louis notes. It’s just basic physics: if it’s mechanical, it will vibrate and vibrations are the enemy of the turntable and the sound it produces. “One day I thought about testing whether I could reduce vibration using the idea of counter-rotation. I wanted to see if we could eliminate torque-force-induced parasitic vibrations in suspended turntables. So I had to build a prototype.” This prototype was first demonstrated at the Montreal Audio show in 2011, where it played a test pressing of a recording of Holst’s The Planets. The demonstration was so successful that Desjardins decided to manufacture the turntable, initially as a limited edition with 250 units. And thus, KRONOS AUDIO was born.

Louis explains the name for his brand originated from his own experience of music, “You cannot have music without time and recordings function as a time machine, hence, the goal is to create the perfect medium to transport the listener back in time.” It was this reverence for preserving the immediacy of an artist’s performance that formed the initial bond of friendship between Louis and Bob Attiyeh. “His [Bob’s] constant search for a sound that can convey the emotion of a performance is what KRONOS hopes to provide, capturing and transmitting the ability of a musician to open an emotional and experiential door. Glenn Gould’s Bach is an excellent example of how an incredible musician can open that door.”

Yarlung’s Special Advisor Abey Fonn is famous for many reasons, including running Impex Records and re-releasing some of the finest vinyl recordings in jazz and classical in the world. Anyone who has heard Abey’s one-step pressing of Jennifer Warnes’ Famous Blue Raincoat, or Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra remembers the experience fondly. We at Yarlung didn’t know that Louis Desjardins was a Yarlung fan until Abey called Yarlung’s producer Bob Attiyeh to ask if he would do three presentations for KRONOS at the 2024 Munich High End Show. Bob was already a KRONOS fan, so immediately said yes. In fact, Bob presented a number of Impex pressings in Munich that year as well as classic Yarlung releases in addition to some new test pressings he picked up from Pallas right before the Munich show. Some of these test pressings were exceptional and some were, shall we say, needing to be redone. That’s what happens with the vinyl artform. Each lacquer one cuts from analog tape has the potential to be different from the last one, and people like Abey and Bob cut and recut until they are satisfied with the results.

One of the exceptional Pallas test pressings came from lacquers Bob and Bernie Grundman had cut for the 20^th Anniversary remastering and repressing of Smoke & Mirrors. The music, performance, sound and soundstage of this test pressing so impressed Louis that KRONOS AUDIO generously underwrote the release and served as the album’s executive producer.

More than Smoke & Mirrors!

Louis uses this particular Yarlung release as one of his preferred demonstration discs, as it shows off just how much emotion, engagement and information a KRONOS turntable can deliver.

Mr. Li Jiawen, (r) General Manager of Junyun Audio. the exclusive distributor of KRONOS Audio in China hosted the appreciation event with Louis Desjardins (l) and LOOK at what Louis brought to demo!

Thanks to this friendship and collaboration, Yarlung now uses a KRONOS turntable in the studio, ostensibly to “test” test pressings as accurately as possible, but more often to enjoy a great deal of non-Yarlung music as well. The turntable pairs superbly with the Yarlung Audio phonostage and preamp, and Bob told me that great as Yarlung’s prior turntables had been, including some famous and often very expensive brands, the precision of the information coming from the KRONOS surpasses them all. That’s what he needs in the studio to give accurate feedback to the pressing companies and to Bernie Grundman for those many instances where Bob and Bernie elect to cut yet another lacquer.

Incidentally, Yarlung’s October/November 2026 release is another 45RPM 180-Gram vinyl pressing thanks to support from KRONOS AUDIO and Craig and Diane Martin. Now in Paris as the resident string quartet of Centre Européen de Musique de Chambre, Quartet Integra’s superlative reading of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16, Op 135 bears the beautiful KRONOS logo as well. The album is titled The Final Statement, as this glorious work was Beethoven’s final published score.

Yarlung sincerely appreciates Louis’ expertise, generosity and enthusiasm. Bob and Louis often phone each other, just to talk about music and how it can sound more alive and like living breathing performance, and Louis is generous with his ideas about what might have gone right (or less right) with a lacquer or test pressing. Louis’ DNA has become integral at Yarlung Records. And as Louis maintains, passionate evangelist for vinyl that he is, “vinyl is the best sounding and most stable archiving medium for music.”

With visionaries like Louis supporting Yarlung Records, there was never a better time to be an audiophile.

--Joshua Cheek