May 2022

Magazines Are A Collaborative Effort
Plus the audio industry has stepped up its game.
Editorial By Alan Sircom

  I hope that you are enjoying our new look magazine. The feedback we have received (see Incoming from page 7 of this issue) has been almost universally positive, which is a reassuring sign. Which is why no one wants to kick off the second of these issues with an apology of sorts.

This is my second run-in with COVID-19; one of the perils of living in a densely-populated capital city like London, I guess. Fortunately, now fully vaccinated and boosted, such a brush with the disease is far less physically damaging than the first time, but I have been hit with the frequently-described symptom of 'Brain Fog'. The fact it took three goes to write that and not write 'Bran Frog' shows just how debilitating this (hopefully temporary) condition can be. The fact it hit – and hit hard – during my key writing phase of this issue shows Fate has a dark sense of humor, as unseen in the background it quiety slips lead in the boxing-glove.

The upshot of all this mind-treacle hopefully won't affect the quality of this issue. Magazines are a collaborative effort and everyone's words are double-checked. But if this issue's quality control is below par, or my reliance on PG Wodehouse quotes becomes too obvious, the problem is that, "In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness." and the blame falls squarely on me.

It's a particular shame if my writing does not achieve its usual 'fizz' this month as there are some truly remarkable products on offer. Despite the set-backs of recent times – and there are many, all extremely well documented – it seems the audio industry has stepped up its game and is producing a range of products that continue to reset performance standards across a range of price points and to fit in the broadest spread of homes and listening rooms. There's no forced credulity in that statement; many of the products on offer today provide performance that was either impossible, or near impossible, both in absolute terms and when seen through the filters of price and size.

Living through this new Golden Age of audio has come as something of a comfort over the last couple of weeks. If you can't string a sentence together and struggle to follow the themes in a book or a movie, at least there's great music on tap.

Staying in apology mode, in the last issue we inadvertently claimed the Audience Studio ONE interconnects and loudspeaker cables were solid-core designs, where in fact they are made with 0.1mm strands of high-purity copper conductors. We also suggested the interconnect cable uses Eichmann plugs, where the ultra-low mass 'Eichmann-like' RCA plugs are in fact made to Audience's specifications by Puresonic. Our apologies for any confusion caused.

Alan Sircom, Editor Hi-Fi+