Editorial August 2024

August 2024

The speed of life is simply staggering innit? Real life work balanced with AV News “work” is challenging but at the same time being busy places demands on music availability (I listen to more music when busy than when not. No really I do!). We take it for granted the sheer capacity of music availability these days and I think back to when if you wanted to listen to a track you had either better own it, or hope it came up on the radio, or in your club of choice. Or else you never heard it. As simple as that.

We try explain this to our kids and they simply don’t get it. Dare I say it? I wonder if they can appreciate what a joy it is to be able to access music at the levels that we can today.

Yes, it’s an age thing!

But I wonder if my Gran who literally saw technology go from ox wagon to man on the moon in her admittedly lengthy 94 year long life span, would grasp the changes at the speed we have seen just in the last 30 years. From CD to obsolete in what, maybe 40 years? From a few hundred artists to a few hundred thousand at your fingertips, at better than CD quality (in bit rates anyway).

The same applies to media. If you didn’t have a subscription to a magazine, you were out of the loop. AV for example. No pay = no news no reviews no nothing. Today, no pay means less than nothing – there are a squillion arm chair and propeller heads with tin foil hats armed with oscilloscopes all ready to deliver into your echo chamber their thoughts of what it is that makes ABC product bloody marvelous or, utter rubbish.

The conspiracy theorists abound, the technical arguments even more so. Increasingly it ca be argued that these lines are blurring based on some of the crap I’ve had the misery of reading. It takes me back to the days when high end manufacturers would be duking it out over the colour of LEDs being used (blue was allegedly more expensive) and THAT was suddenly a factor in product differentiation in the squabble for customers.

These days I have been wondering what we journalists have become, and what our roles should be. I don’t think the roles have changed but the delivery mechanism certainly has, and the financial side of it has seen journalism’s traditional income sources diverted directly into whatisname’s next 300m yacht. Good journalism these days doesn’t pay – the new media rock stars are influencers who to their credit have seen the game, and positioned into it with adroit outright luck and/or plucky determination and made a good coin in doing so. Journalists hate them, and I can understand why.

Look, I have always had opinions that have gotten me into trouble even behind the shield of subjectivity that rules our AV world. But if our job was to colour and influence you, our dear consumer of media, then we would be influencers. And given that we’re currently not paid, in any shape or form, should we really give a toss about what people think about what we say?

Of course we should. It’s our little niche wherein our opinions can be expressed within the bounds of good journalism. We have different styles and personalities and I have always erred on the side of opinion and personality over black and white fact only based coverage. I also think that standards are, after all, what separates us from the conspiracy theorists. It is why we couldn’t do AV News without Andrew, who is the guy that checks and balances our standards.

I think that this is what separates us from errmmm, others that are telling you to buy things because they’re paid to tell you a product is the schnizzle. I find it irritating that this makes the inherent assumption that you can’t think, or hear for yourself. No matter that the delivery format has changed, arguably to the detriment of we, the content creators, the message has not. Hi-fi can be celebrated, it can be a life long hobby, it can be your refuge in music, it can be an obsession for the unachievable.

But it is always, always, first and foremost, yours. Your relationship with kit, or music (preferably both!). How that message resonates remains as true today as it ever did, just with quite a lot less pay.

But of course we do derive the same immense joy and pleasure that stems from picking out new and old music on demand. At any time. Especially when we’re busy.

It excites me to think about what the changes are that we’re going to be seeing in the next 5, 10 or 20 years…

So, please do hop on board, tell your friends and spread the word.

William Kelly

Publisher