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In less than 10 years, Thomas Tan became an audiophile, launched a successful audio-related YouTube channel, established his own audio brand, and creates video content for seminal audio magazine The Absolute Sound (TAS). As Thomas explained his relationship with audio to me: “I have that problem—when I become obsessed with something, I’m obsessed.“

That life-changing obsession was sparked when he heard a $300,000 system belonging to someone who is now a friend. “It opened my eyes to what stereo could be,” he said to me during our interview at the house of one of his colleagues, electrical engineer Fabien Tremblay, who was there with us at the dining table. “Before that my music listening was limited mostly to the radio.”

It prompted him to get his own stereo, although not one costing in the six figures. “I said to myself, ‘let’s go with the law of diminishing returns, so I started with a $3000 system. I said all I need are good speakers and a cheap amp. But then I started experimenting. I collected a lot of gear.”

It became a full-fledged audio journey of trial and error and discovery, one he decided to share with others.

“I thought, ‘why not do a YouTube channel?’ At the time when I did it, in 2017, audio YouTube channels weren’t popular. But I wanted to bring everybody with me on my journey.”

That journey has so far garnered him over 80,000 YouTube followers who tune in to hear him talk about various gear, but also to catch his show reports. His AXPONA 2023 report got 40,000 views, his Montreal Audiofest 2022 one, 100,000 views. These numbers caught the attention of TAS, who reached out to Thomas to ask if he’d like to do videos for the magazine’s own YouTube channel. Thomas agreed, and his first video for TAS, a review of the KEF R3 Meta speakers, has so far amassed 79,000 views, the majority of which came from the US, then Canada, and about 10% from the rest of the world.

“I got an order today from Australia for one of my amplifiers,” Thomas said.

Which brings me to the next chapter in Thomas’s audio journey: his manufacturing company Galion Audio, which he founded in 2020. The company manufacturers and sells an assortment of gear, including tube and solid state designs, and cables. One of the interesting things about his business model is how it’s built on relationships Thomas establishes with engineers whose previous work impressed him—whose sound, as Thomas put it, made him go ‘whoa’ with delight.

The first such relationship was with company Doge’s Mr. Liu, who had sent Thomas, who’s based in Canada, one of his tube amplifiers from China. That a designer from so far away would do such a thing is not uncommon, apparently. “Because I have a YouTube channel,” Thomas said. “I have designers from around the world sending me stuff.” His relationship with Mr. Liu was the pivot point that led to the creation of Galion Audio, and paved the way to other partnerships, in which Galion Audio, fully owned by Thomas, would hire designers in a third-party capacity to build its products.

Another one of those engineers was the man sitting at the table with us, Fabien, designer of Galion’s solid state series of amplifiers, of which a prototype of his TS A20 class-A amplifier sat on the table between us.

Thomas calls Fabien “one of the geniuses out there… that we never hear about.” After pursuing his interest in electronics in university, where he built his own graphic equalizer and a harmonic distortion analyzer, Fabien began building his own amplifiers, complex ones with complex circuitry, under the false assumption, Fabien said, they would sound better than simpler designs. He later realized, as he explained it, “that it’s easier to determine what the effects will be of a modification to a circuit when it’s simpler than when it’s so complicated it’s hard to know exactly how your modification may have affected the various parts of the circuit.”

Thomas explained how he and Fabien met: “People from everywhere invite me to listen to their systems. One of those systems was a DIY one. When I heard it, I thought, ‘holy cow, this is in the top three systems I’ve heard in my life’. And I’ve listened to million-dollar systems.

“And the preamp in that system was designed by him.”—He points at Fabien—”That’s when I went, ‘what the hell?’. For Fab, this was just a hobby. I reached out to him and said, ‘hey, do you want to do something?’. That’s where it started.”

The relationship has been going so well that Thomas and Fabien have plans to roll out several other products. The same applies with Thomas and Mr. Liu.

“What I realized over time is there are a lot of good engineers but they don’t know how to market [their products],” said Thomas. “So I propose to them, ‘okay, you build this for me, and I’ll market it’. That’s my advantage as a YouTuber. My only specific request is that I voice the product, meaning I tell the engineer [where to change the product’s] sound.” Thomas is akin to the chef in the kitchen who tastes the dish and decides if it needs a splash more of this or a dab more of that. Only once he’s convinced there are no more adjustments to be made does he allow the end product to be served to the consumer.

In Mr. Liu’s case, that necessitated Thomas going to China to oversee his products’ development. As for Fabien and, specifically, the TS A20 amp in front of me. “I’ve been here 200 times to voice that amp,” Thomas said with a chuckle, to which Fabien rejoined with, “Sometimes I have to revert to the previous modification, or even the one at the beginning, or…”—he moves his hand back-and-forth to simulate manic repetition.

“And you’re still friends”, I said with mock surprise, eliciting some slightly nervous laughter from both.

Every Galion product is credited to the designer, whose name is imprinted on the chassis’s front or back panel. Fabien’s signature appears on the front of his creations, including on the made-in-Canada TS A20, while Mr Liu’s signature appears, in Chinese characters, on the back.

I heard both the made-in-Canada class-A TS A20 ($3750) and class-A or A/B (the amp is switchable between both configurations) TS 34 ($2950) in my own system, and liked very much what I heard—the TS A20 has that expressiveness and gush-like musical flow of a well-oiled class-A design, while the TS 34 in class-A mode sounded über-transparent, rich with detail, with a soundstage that traversed several levels of depth. The TS A20 comes with a 2-year guarantee, the TS 34, a 1-year guarantee.

“As long as the product is a ‘whoa’ product,” Thomas said. “I’ll bring it to market. People put their trust in me and I don’t want to let them down.” Thomas’s name, after all, is on the line. This is no mass-production affair—we’re very far from Marantz or Simaudio territory. But what Galion may lack in resources and longevity compared to some companies, it strives to make up for by offering great-sounding products that sell for less than competitors’ similarly-performing ones. To keep costs down, Galion sells direct and keeps profit margins low, a recipe Thomas hopes will initiate more people into a hobby that, as in his case, was life-changing.

In the course of my conversation with Thomas, it became clear to me that he’s on this audio path for the right reasons—out of passion for audio and a desire to make Galion an enduring source of ‘whoa’-sounding products designed to impress, well, everyone, of course, but mostly those YouTube friends who’ve decided to join him on his audio journey.

To quote a part of his About blurb on his Thomas and Stereo channel, “I designed this channel to give you the feeling of chatting with an old friend. I am fortunate to have made many audiophile friends on my audio journey.” In a sign of the times, his blurb ends with, “Please note that by sending in your product, you agree to not pursue any legal action for negative feedback”.

By all accounts, Thomas’s audio obsession is a noble one. He loves audio and wants to share his passion with others. If what he’s accomplished so far in his “obsession” with audio is any predictor of what’s to come, I, for one, very much look forward to the next chapter in Thomas’s audio journey.