Issue 88    April 2012
Global Expansion
Editorial By Alan Sircom

 We are fast becoming a global market. The parochial and myopic view of audio that we all seem to have shared in the past is ebbing away fast. But there are still hold-outs. There are still people who cannot think past country boundaries, and that they only want to buy local products from local brands. While from a patriotic standing this might make good sense, it’s ultimately self-defeating; because if a brand only plays to the home crowd and the home crowd has a bad couple of years, the brand may not survive.

This is why we made the decision to expand this magazine’s 'brief' to include products that appear on the global stage but might not yet be sold in the UK. These are products that we feel should be in the UK, but also that our readership outside the UK is just as important to us as our UK residents.

However, it is often still felt in audio circles that if you can break the UK market, you can succeed anywhere. Unfortunately, the UK’s audio scene is in one of its self-absorbed phases right now. In part, that’s because some domestic companies embraced change faster than foreign rivals and are making excellent new products. It’s our aim to both give these new and exciting products some visibility on a world stage and at the same time wake up the home market to the possibility of there being new products made beyond these shores worth investigating.

This is also the reason why we are proud supporters of the New York Audio & AV Show. From April 13th-15th, the prestigious Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Park Avenue will be home to some of the world’s finest hi-fi and home cinema products. Some of these names will be old friends, some of them will be new faces and some of them are old names that should be better known around the world. We’d love to see you there, but for those not flying to NYC in the middle of April, we will also be reporting back on this show in our next issue.

In addition, between now and the next issue, there’s a little matter of the Munich High-End show taking place in early May. We will be covering the show at length too, and any preview information we get, we’ll publish as soon as we get it at www.avguide.com. Check it out!

Errata: In the last issue, we inadvertently printed some incorrect details in the review of the Consonance power amplifiers. The models listed are the Cyber 'S' models, priced at £6,495 per pair. This does not alter our feelings toward the products. Our apologies for any confusion caused.

 

Alan Sircom, Editor Hi-Fi+