November 2015
In This Issue...
Tannoy Westminsters, Raspberry Pi And More!

  OK, few of us can afford a pair of Tannoy Westminsters – and perhaps few of us would want to. Their size and styling are not – er – current idiom, shall I say. But what the heck. They're still fabulous devices, almost barking mad in the way they seemingly ignore every sensible modern constraint to deliver a fabulous sound. £28k and 140kgs or not, we had to get them in for review – and you can read the result on p10. I hope it brings a smile to your face!

I would like to say the same thing for our Raspberry Pi sound card review on p55 but I know that many readers just do not like computers in any size, shape or form. And I understand. They often annoy me too, even though I've been building the darn things for decades now and am no computer virgin.

Worse, although a lot of young people use them to dangerous distraction, they have little interest in what goes on inside – and this is where Raspberry Pi becomes a tad political. It is meant to be a platform for teaching the young about computers and computer programming, to give Britain a future generation able to profit from tomorrow's technologies. Whilst Pi in itself is a fabulous piece of technology, I'm less certain that the Pi experience is going to appeal to anyone not already conversant with computers; you have to know about Pi before you can use it – a somewhat contradictory situation. I guess it's aimed at the classroom.

All the same, we tackled Pi and were ultimately impressed. Happenstance (I like that word) delivered an e-mail to us of a reader's experiences with Pi to help expand the picture – see p34 Letters. So some love Pi!

The Entotem Plato is a fascinating new music source, newly designed in the UK, that aims to make even LP easily accessible on a modern streaming system. It gave me a fright: I played an LP and a picture of the album cover suddenly popped up on its screen. Where did that come from, I wondered in amazement? You can find out more about this on p42. The world is becoming a clever place! 

Martin Pipe reminds us of all our yesterdays on P91 where he covers quadraphonic transmission that needed two transmitters. Really? Even the BBC did it. You can see why the 1970s were the glory days of audio; no one would consider that right or normal nowadays. Audio can be surprisingly wacky and perhaps that describes some of what lies in this issue! I hope you enjoy it. 

--- Noel Keywood, editor.

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