Editorial June 2025

June 2025

It’s getting chilly in Joburg and that’s OK. I have a valve amp from Mars on review and it is warming the room with all of it’s 8 watts of output power but probably a gazillion in heat generation. I’ll be putting the finishing touches on that review shortly and then it will be on its way home. Spending time in front of it however made me think about just how differently we enjoy our music and the visual cues that influence our perception of a thing. And if we know the price then that too sends cues to our brains about what to expect, right?

Our first MAX event hammered this home. It was an informal get together just to see the demand, interest levels and for me, some cars to listen to. We’ll be formalising the first event shortly and I cannot wait to get it under the belt. I jumped into most of the cars that came around expecting what one expects from car competition sound and I let the owners play music that they enjoyed. I, and this is important, know nothing about any of the systems and specifically didn’t ask. I hope I never will. What materialised was so interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to sound ‘innacar’ and getting an understanding of what people enjoy. Surprisingly for me anyway was the level of detail on offer and what transpired when I folded and played a reference track on one of the cars.

Music matters people and your enjoyment of it matters more. Our ‘job’ at MAX is simply to evaluate against a known set of criteria how a system benchmarks against certain references, and that’s all. It has nothing to do with what you enjoy and if that happens to have no resemblance to reality that’s perfectly OK. We’re not judging…. but we’re judging! What came out of this was very quickly just how high the standards already are, and how much work lies ahead in discerning the extremely fine and grey areas between what separates the awesome from the truly reproductive. It is going to be a tight and fun ride that is for sure.

William Kelly

Publisher