Editorial July 2026

July 2026

A new month and it is winter. Solar is now installed and the impact on the sound system has been… nil. I was hoping for a lower noise floor with curated power now from the inverter but to date I haven’t noticed any meaningful change. At least no new noise has crept in and things remain silent when at idle which is L for Lekker.

Musically however things are busy happening. Whilst I may have nattered on about the advent of AI in music and how terrible it can be, the fun stuff that is happening is I think beginning to unfold in recording studios around the world. It stands to reason that a recording engineer can use AI to perform the tedious tasks and allow more time for easier mixing and more creativity. Watch this space and expect to see music that is more involving, more natural sounding and dare I say it, more accurate at source.

This is incredibly exciting and just as streaming has opened up the world’s entire music repository to everyone at ludicrously low cost, so too I think AI might present a notable improvement where it matters now more than ever before, at the recording and mastering stages. I also listened to a properly set up Atmos system briefly, all too briefly, and came away with mixed feelings. Atmos is more immersive owing to the sheer number of speakers engaged in the process of re-creating music with a focus on live realism but it comes at a price. Both in the wallet, the scarcity of software and in the rabbit hole that is the setup listening position tweaking. I think the latter is easily solved and whilst Atmos delivers in a visual context which comes with an entirely new set of listening criteria of the visual cortex phenomenon it is really interesting to hear it create space.

It’s a bit like high end car audio – in which it is possible to generate layers of music and deliver a sense of realism that belies what you are actually looking at. I am not suggesting standard car sound installations as done by your car maker – but the installations done by professionals who understand musicality in car sound via setups that will make your mind boggle. The value proposition is annoyingly tempting I won’t lie and this Sunday coming I get to further my skills on this front. At our previous MAX event the standard was so high across the board that Joel and I almost got into trouble because we really had to dig deep to put together differences in systems that challenged us on the minutiae. May it always be thus!

Be happy!

William Kelly

Publisher