The Audio Room’s Kurt Villanueva on Sound and Legacy
Walk in on any given afternoon and you will likely find staff deep in conversation, guiding customers past speakers touting the newest technology or seated together in one of the hi-fi rooms, letting a favourite album do the talking. The energy here is not hushed reverence — it is genuine engagement, the kind that comes from a team who would rather talk about music for an hour than rush a sale.
The Audio Room opened its doors in the mid-nineties, founded by Peter Segstro and the late Lawrence Ling, two friends whose devotion to music built a haven for audiophiles and newcomers alike. Lawrence’s wife, Sabrina Ling, remains part of the story that carries the store forward. That founding spirit carries through the store today, in renovated hi-fi rooms and a home theatre auditorium built to bring every system to life.
Those dedicated rooms are not a luxury so much as a necessity. “A showroom floor is full of chaos and background noise,” Kurt Villanueva explains. “A dedicated, treated room is a quiet sanctuary where we drop the noise floor to zero. It lets us dial in exact speaker placement and reflections so you can hear exactly what the artist intended without outside interference.”
For co-owner Villanueva, the story begins on a Christmas Eve when he was twelve years old, listening to a cousin’s new stereo system for the first time, a moment he remembers clearly even now.
By his teens, he was building his own speakers. He worked in retail at Future Shop through high school, learning the sales process on a showroom floor that once required a suit and tie. He studied computer science and business at Mount Royal University, though computer science did not hold him long. He switched to business, and it was there, through a chance connection with a classmate, that he launched his first company, Audio Dream Distributions, sourcing high-end brands into stores across Canada.
The Audio Room became one of his earliest clients, placing his very first purchase order. That relationship deepened, and when Segstro and Ling both faced serious health struggles, Villanueva stepped in to help, first as a volunteer moving boxes, then increasingly as the person keeping the doors open. When the family asked whether he could make something of the place, he saw an opportunity where much of the industry saw only decline.
He rebuilt the store’s reach through digital marketing, a discipline the audio industry had largely ignored, and the results followed. In its first five years under his direction, the business grew by roughly 470 percent, earning it the Calgary Chamber of Commerce’s recognition as one of the city’s fastest-growing companies.
The store has since won the Consumer Choice Award seven years running, and each year it hosts the Calgary Audio Show, drawing top manufacturers to debut their newest amplifiers and loudspeakers on Western Canadian soil for the first time.
That growth has never come at the expense of what happens on the sales floor. Villanueva has watched the moment a system clicks with someone enough times to describe it in detail.
“A customer’s body language shifts instantly,” he shares. “They stop analyzing the bass or the specs. They lean back, close their eyes, and the tension drops from their shoulders. Sometimes they get goosebumps or sit in absolute, stunned silence. That is when the gear disappears and
the performance takes over.”
Getting a customer there starts long before any equipment comes into the conversation. “I start by forgetting about the hardware,” Villanueva says. “I want to know about your soul and your music,” asking, “What song completely changes your mood?” Music is universal, he notes, and there is a system for everyone that perfectly suits their lifestyle and taste. The biggest misconception he works to dispel is the belief that high-end audio belongs only to trained listeners. “Believing that you don’t have golden ears or won’t tell the difference” keeps too many newcomers from ever walking through the door, he explains. “Anyone can immediately feel the depth and emotional vibe of a great setup — you don’t need a trained ear to feel the music hit you differently.”
At The Audio Room, there was a deliberate choice made early on — every staff member sells on commission-free terms. This ensures the experience is about the customer rather than the sale, a philosophy that shapes the advice Villanueva gives every newcomer, regardless of budget. “Trust your own ears over reviews, forum hype, or price tags,” he says. “Music is deeply personal. If a budget-friendly setup makes you want to tap your toes and listen to an album all the way through, that is the right choice. Your emotional response is the ultimate measurement.” For Villanueva, sound has always been personal, and this year, as The Audio Room marks thirty years in business, he has spent his career making sure that whoever walks through the door leaves having heard something worth bringing home.