Editorial July 2025

July 2025

Rain in July In Johannesburg. When last do you recall this happening? Climate change is a thing!

Part of what I do these days is to comment on happenings within the auto industry and that is materially linked to the economy. And the economy is materially linked to our beloved hobby of high end audio because hobby money is the money you have left after you’ve spent what you need to spend on. It is discretionary spend in other words and in recent years the economy has been placing the hurt on this decreasing bundle of cash available.

But the resurgence in stereo appreciation has been remarkable. What this translates to in my mind anyway, are those key words: Value for money. If you’re not delivering value for money as a vendor I suspect your days are numbered. Those that do deliver value for money however will prosper and thrive and when the economy eventually does change course I think will find themselves in the pound seats.

One of the overlooked sources of value for money has to be on our own front doorstep. We have quality products that can stand up against anything else in the world at way less money. I think sometimes maybe we overlook what is actually incredible value and maybe we overthink the cachet that an exotic overseas brand may be perceived to deliver against a locally produced equivalent. I think we do so to our own detriment because if you let your ears do the listening objectively it can be hard sometimes to deny what amounts to compelling value. Go in ears open and let your mind come to the conclusion that your ears may  be signalling to you.

In the pursuit of reference music these days the choice is staggering. There is a lot of truly hideous rubbish out there but digital mastery and mixing by what can only be described as wizards has increased in recent years to the point where source material contains far more texture and reference detail than ever before. It is possible to artificially create sonic environments from scratch that can test highly specific hard to reproduce demands on any system. The idea is that if a system can in fact faithfully reproduce such performance that it will then have no problem with the subtleties and nuances that are similar in your regular listening material. It is a tender mix of subjectivity and objectivity that are always in play in our hobby. Smoke some local kit with your reference tracks and let us know just how well they perform!

William Kelly

Publisher