At the beginning of every year we normally have a look at the previous one and make plans for the future. As for 2005, there's little to be said: our tenth year of web presence has seen popularity growing at a fast and steady pace (more than 200,000 unique visitors per month), we've been cited on Forbes, the financial bible, plus on various local TVs (more is expected in 2006). Our 10 years celebration during the Rome HiEnd Show has been broadcasted via satellite by a local TV while our We Support Real Stereo campaign has been joined by nearly 150 websites worlwide. We'll do better :-)
From 2006 on we'll be applying a small mod to the lists of reviewed products. As asked by many of you, each review link will be matched to month and year of publication so that spotting the most recent ones should be far easier. But since we're lazy lads :-) this mod will be applied to new ones only. Furthermore, we are continuosly reformatting old articles, so that the appearance will match to the new color scheme. Gone is the old black background with white text. We hope to conclude this updating process during 2006.
Of course, we're also planning to add new writers to our staff (the usual Dirty Dozen). We always need new breed :-) Perhaps writers who left us in the past will be back, let's see. What we particularly need is an editorial staff with correspondents from many different Countries, so to preserve our usual richness of viewpoints. We strongly believe that a staff with "different" views and opinions is a guarantee for readers and manufacturers.
We are not afraid to publish even controversial pieces (like the Sondek LP 12 and Technics SL 1200 turntables tests, for example) as we were not afraid to publish the - perhaps - mostly controversial review ever written on an audio mag: that of the T-Amp. It caused a stir, to say the least. Of course, we will continue to propose low cost alternatives to traditional HiFi.
We're actually working on a kind of complete "T-System" i.e. a system built with unusual components that stand above the rest because of their stellar value/price ratio. We already have the T-Amp and the T-Preamp, we need a "T-Source" and some T-Speakers.
As for sources, we're working on a comparative test of extremely low priced DACs (mainly of the non-oversampling variety) while for speakers we've already found something extremely good and inexpensive...the only problem is that its "just average" sensitivity might be not the ideal match for the T-Amp. Stay tuned for more infos.
On the other hand we will not forget to test some of the most recent advances in audio technology (new Class D amplifiers, for example). In order to be able to fully understand inexpensive gear you need to know where the state of the art is.
Finally, this 2006 will bring some intriguing news at a very personal level. I'm in the process of building a new listening room, hopefully I'll be free to choose walls lenghts and ratios. I'll try to keep wall lenghts ratio as close as possible to the Golden Ratio (0.618, please refer to our interview with George Cardas of Cardas Cables). Then I'll experiment some new acoustic treatment. I don't want a "special" listening hall, just something not too far from an average living room (European average, yes :-)), without the usual acoustic problems, of course.
Hopefully this process will give me hints which may prove to be useful for some of you. I'm pretty sure the whole procedure will take time, I have dozens of HiFi components still "packed" and waiting to be installed and connected. I expect the new listening room to be a vast upgrade over my previous ones. My new house (a villa by the seaside, very far from traffic) is extremely silent and surrounded by a large garden. Neighbourhoods are far too...and this should help ;-)
The noise floor is extremely low and I'm already able to detect transformers noise and cabinet vibrations with more ease now. I'll keep you updated.
Well, enough news for the new year, stay with us, as usual and we'll try to bring you more "fun" than any other audio publication out there :-)
© Copyright 2006 Lucio Cadeddu - www.tnt-audio.com