| Retrospective | 20 Years of High End by Myles Astor /cont'd |
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#9: High-End Audio Publications Computers, printers, scanners, software, media storage devices and web presses have revolutionized the publishing industry—one look at today’s newsstands reveals how modern publishing techniques have allowed magazines to proliferate. As a result of these technological advances, printing costs have dropped dramatically. Given these technological advances, the layout of many high-end audio magazines appears to continue to be downright amateurish with graphics that are borderline unreadable. For example, the inappropriate use of kerning (squeezing letters together) and ledding (the space between lines) to shoehorn articles into an issue is out of control (thank goodness we’ve worked past using 20 different type styles on a page!). Of course, the competition for market-share has become stiff. The tremendous costs involved in running, assembling, designing and printing a small, hobbyist audio magazine have paved the way significantly for less expensive, internet-based, virtual magazines. Sending hard copy to the printer is but a distant memory. Gone too, it seems, is the enthusiasm of the early days. In its stead: an industry-wide pervasive negativity and unhealthy skepticism. Magazine publishing is now a real business, as it must be, but where is the love of labor high-end audio publishing should be? (Ed. Note: You’re holding it, dear reader!). #8: Failure to Preserve the History of the High-End Audio Industry This is simply an inexplicable mistake. High-end audio is replete with a wonderful, rich history, full of fascinating, quirky and brilliant individuals and stories. Save for the occasional book such as Ken Kessler’s history of Quad, our industry’s history remains largely an oral tradition. Sadly, the founders and leaders of high-end audio aren’t getting any younger and unless something is done soon, much of high-end audio’s history will be lost forever. Those who forget the past… #7: Vinyl Record Reissues Without a doubt, Classic Records, Analogue Productions, Speakers Corner, Cisco Music and a handful of other record labels (and even some of the major labels but not necessarily for altruistic reasons) single-handedly rescued the analog turntable business from the brink of oblivion. The original vs. reissue sonic debate aside, these companies have done their best with the sources available and not only preserved but discovered many excellent recordings that would never have seen the light of day on CD. To boot, they’ve also issued recordings of new artists and all at reasonable cost. #6: Quality of Audio Parts No list of events tracing the history of high-end audio over the past 20 years is complete without mentioning the seminal works of Jung and Curl on capacitors. Their in-depth research into dielectric absorption not only resulted in successive new generations of audiophile grade capacitors (an entire mini-industry unto itself today), but also a complete reassessment of the effect on a product’s sound of passive parts inside every electronic component or speaker. Today in high-end audio, every part in and out of the circuit, including resistors, diodes, capacitors, wires, soldering technique, volume controls, circuit board construction, passive parts used in power supplies, connectors and chassis resonances, is carefully selected so as to optimize sonic quality. |
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