hi-fi+ Global Network Magazine hi-fi+ Issue 240 Back Issue

Despite changes to the market and the disappearance of significant numbers of new buyer, it’s still possible to buy good audio for around £1,000 today. The names may have changed, but if anything the quality has improved; the semi-automatic turntable I had used to make a lot of clunking noises.

This magazine has standards, and it’s easy to think they purely relate to price. They don’t; it’s always about the music. We extended the coverage of hi-fi+ to include active streaming loudspeakers because they got good enough to hold their own at the price and nothing else. So, seeing a streaming DAC preamplifier that costs less than a USB enhancement device is not only entierly consistent with those standards, but makes us happy that audio at all levels is moving ahead.

However, there’s another side to this. There’s a tendency toward argumentum ad crumenam and its opposite argumentum ad lazarum. The first – an appeal to the purse – could be summed up as ‘it’s good because it’s expensive’, while the latter is ‘it’s good because it’s cheap’. Neither holds water; something in audio sounds good because it is good, regardless of cost. And, while it’s exceptionally unlikely that a pair of £500 loudspeakers will outperform a pair of £500,000 loudspeakers, there are always products at any price that punch above their weight class.

We need more products that do that, whatever their price.