Issue 110    April 2014
The Global Village
Editorial By Alan Sircom

  The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed something missing from our logo this month: no more, "The Absolute Sound's" on the masthead. While The Absolute Sound and Hi-Fi+ still share an owner in common (namely, our Chairman and CEO, Thomas B. Martin, Jr.), the two magazines march to a very different beat at times. We both have the same passion about the best of high-end audio, but that ‘best' is tempered both by location and outlook. Hi-Fi+ has never tried to be a clone of TAS (or vice versa), but where the idea of pooling our resources seemed a good one at first, it became clear the different outlooks of our two respective magazines made that difficult in most cases.

Nevertheless, it's a truly international world now. This month we have loudspeakers from Estonia, Italy, Germany, and the right in the heart of London; we have turntables from the UK and cartridges from Slovenia, power products from the USA and a headphone amplifier designed in the US and EU and made in China.

We truly are a global village today, and all good villages need an idiot! So perhaps it's not unexpected that in all our plans for pan-global domination, we got the English price of a Canadian cartridge wrong in the last issue. The price of the Charisma Audio is £750, not £1,000 as stated in the review. As such, given Jimmy Hughes liked the cartridge a lot, you can pretty much bank on the fact he likes it a lot more in the light of it being 3/4s the cost he thought it was. Our apologies to Real Hi-Fi, Charisma Audio, and all to all concerned.

In addition, our attention was drawn to an error in the review of the Canadian Magnum Dynalab MD807 internet radio. We would like to point out that both MD807 and MD809 internet radio tuners from the company feature upconverting and oversampling Burr-Brown 24-bit, 192kHz DAC chips. Our apologies to Audiofreaks (UK), Magnum Dynalab, and to all concerned.

On a lighter note (but still staying in Canada), we would like to congratulate Dan Howden of Edmonton, Alberta, who wins the excellent Ayon Audio Orion III integrated valve amplifier. Dan correctly spotted that our colleagues over at The Absolute Sound dubbed Ayon "The Bugatti of audio" and as a result 50 watts of pure tube deliciousness is heading his way!  

Alan Sircom, Editor Hi-Fi+