Issue 67    September 2009
Editorial By Alan Sircom

  With the Whittlebury Hall Audio Show 2009 just a few days away (on the 26th and 27th September), we're hyped up by the prospect of our Northamptonshire weekend away. With more than 100 brands on show, it looks to be an exciting event. See you there!

Now that we've revamped the magazine, it's now the turn of our website to be brought out of cryogenic storage and given a new lick of e-paint. We've more or less kept the good old home page for now - that too will change as the new site is 'populated' with blogs, features and more - but point your browser at www.hifiplus.com to find out more.

With such radical changes happening to magazine and website, as well as the large-scale shifts in the way we buy music and the products through which we listen to that music, it's time to look past the current economic crisis and see what the future holds for hi-fi.

In a way, you could be forgiven for thinking the Credit Crunch had left the audiophile world unscathed. This issue, we feature two loudspeaker designs both costing over £25,000 (one wholly new, one the most radical reworking of a product in its three decade history), as well as a preamplifier that is not far short of £20,000. Meanwhile, new and more down-to-earth products from Sugden and Naim show that as the economy starts to recover, hi-fi brands are more than ready for action.

I'd like to say a big 'Thank You' to our readers who filled in our recent survey. It makes for a vital way to help us to determine the types of products Hi-Fi Plus will review over the next few months and years. While we can't guarantee everyone's desires will make it to page, but it's an important indicator of what people really want. And congratulations to Mr. Hay of London and Mr. Allen of Surbiton, who each win a pair of Audio-Technica AD-700 headphones. We'd also like to congratulate Mr. Stallard of the Rhondda valley who won a pair of AudioSmile Kensai loudspeakers. We'll be running more competitions, just as soon as we take a breather from planning next month's Awards issue, which will be in the UK shops on October 15.

Finally, truly transatlantic publishing is not without its teething troubles... and last issue, the biggest teething trouble was the complete disappearance of two pages of our Top Ten feature. Although we supplied prints and PDF files to anyone who asked for them, we decided to re-run the feature in its entirety on pages 91 to 95 of this issue. My apologies for any inconvenience caused.