“At 18 months old, an accident affected my sight.” Thus begins audio dealer Mutine’s Pascal Ravach’s biography on the company’s website. “From the age of three until 2021,” it continues. “I had more than a dozen eye operations, and I often have to wear dark glasses. The blind people I meet tell me that I listen like them—‘intensely’, ‘tactilely’. This is perhaps what predisposed me to study music, and later to push my research into High-Fidelity, looking for a holographic, realistic reproduction…”

A transplanted Belgian and world traveler—he met his vietnamese wife in Thailand—Pascal is an eternal student of writing, spiritualism, architectural engineering, ecology, and countless other pursuits of self-discovery. He has cultivated a lifelong relationship with audio equipment that reflects his ideals of balance and naturalness—qualities that would define his Zen-like approach to sound.

Encouraged by a friend who suggested that working in audio could be fun, Pascal began his career as a consultant in Switzerland in 1979. That decision would lead him, over the decades that followed, to represent some of the most iconic and musically groundbreaking audio products in Hi-Fi history.

Pascal was a blast from my past. After making a name for himself in Europe, he settled in Montreal in 1996 and soon after founded the company Mutine. Among the brands he distributed was France-based Audiomat, whose Tempo 1 DAC, in particular, had been making waves on this side of the pond. It became the catalyst for our meeting sometime in the late ’90s or early 2000s, after I expressed interest in auditioning it. Pascal obliged by bringing it to my home so I could hear it in my own system—a transactional approach that was unconventional in Quebec at the time, when stores didn’t even lend out equipment. Pascal’s gesture was not only friendlier than what I was used to; it also made perfect sense. As everyone now knows, the best way to know how a component will sound in your system is to hear it in your system. And it worked—Pascal’s enterprise quickly took off in North America, exceeding his expectations.

Eventually, it became difficult to reconcile his passion for audio with the demands of running a business. In 2008—after 30 years in the industry—Pascal suffered burnout. He came close to quitting the business, but encouragement from colleagues—and especially from customers—gave him the motivation to continue, albeit at a more manageable pace. This led to a semi-retirement that allowed him to fulfill a long-time dream: designing and building a bio-energetic, solar-powered home that could also serve as a space where Mutine could welcome visitors interested in auditioning audio equipment in a serene, meditative environment.

To this end, three dedicated listening rooms were built, each meticulously isolated from the exterior, constructed with thermo-treated knotty pine boards, and outfitted with a complete audio system, as well as various gear and accessories that can be swapped in during an audition.

Pascal is adamant about what constitutes good sound: unmechanical, unforced, real—in a word, natural. This principle underpins how he selects the products he represents and defines what he calls Audio Zendo—a space where audio gear is judged by how it sounds, not by how impressive its specifications may look on paper.

It all points to Pascal’s pursuit of sonic balance, which is why he prefers to sell complete systems rather than individual components that lead people down the rabbit hole of endless upgrades. He calls this piecemeal approach to system building a recipe for “Addition, Subtraction, Frustration.” By contrast, Pascal says his demos are carefully assembled to reach a level of musicality that defies the need to upgrade.

“My goal is to have my customers buying ‘once for good,’” he said. “Most of them enjoy the same system for decades.”

It all comes down to what Pascal sees as the most important factor in achieving superior sound reproduction: synergy. And when synergy is the goal, it doesn’t matter whether the system is entry-level or high-end. “People often confuse luxury with good sound,” he told me.

So, about those three listening rooms? You can glide through them one after the other, until you find yourself in the smallest of the three—a room dedicated to a KEF/Primare surround sound setup that was visually unobtrusive, reasonably priced, and, on the concert footage played for us, sounded great: immersive, sonically layered, robust, dynamically nuanced, and… well, natural.

The systems in the other two rooms—one higher-end, the other more moderately priced—both centered around Duevel omnidirectional horn speakers, which Pascal prizes for their spacious sound, holographic imaging, and effortless harmonic spread. Again, each system embodied Pascal’s core criterion for good sound: naturalness. They also delivered oodles of texture and tactility.

Maybe it was my heightened receptiveness to the natural stimuli all around me, but with each passing minute of music, I felt my body sink deeper into the listening seat.

By the end, I felt musically fortified and spiritually recalibrated. Even today, the memory lingers of experiencing wonderful-sounding music in a place that felt less like a store and more like a musical retreat, created to honour another form of balance—between music and listener.

For more information about Mutine and its products, click here.