Dan D 'Agostino, Mark Levinson, Jim Thiel,

Nelson Pass is a great example; look what happened to Threshold when he left.

On an unrelated note, I see that SAE is coming back. I presume that Jim Bongiorno is no longer associated with the marque having passed on a couple of years ago.

I stayed up last night worrying about that!!

Levinson (the person) has designed some new-ish stuff from Daniel Hertz and lives in Venice (on a boat maybe?). He seems to come up with interesting things from time to time, as does his old company owned by Harmon (I think). Same with Krell in the sense that they keep at it with some well regarded integrateds and such...D'Agostino must have found some VERY deep pockets to finance his line of extreme toys, or he got rich from Krell, but the designs he's out there with are pretty cool and other's could take a que from this stuff as most audio gear looks stale or more Bauhaus than Art Deco.

+ 1 with your post wolf_Garcia about the Agostino equipment!

One example where the founder's leaving (in this case, passing away) did not result in a company "going to the dogs" was Snell, where Kevin Voecks produced some excellent designs following the death of Peter Snell.