Just a reminder to stop your cat from sleeping on your amplifier, even though it's lovely and warm. This is the result of one of our lovely customers who's feline friend spent 2 consecutive winters using his hifi system as a bed...

In order to evaluate the effects of sonic booms NASA have built a room that is something of a wet dream for an audio enthusiast. Comprising 52 JL Audio subwoofers amongst other transducers the room is capable of emulating the overpressure and SPL of different degrees of sonic boom shockwave whilst appearing to be an ordinary American middle class living area in order to evaluate the tolerance of households to potential regular supersonic aircraft.

Occasionally I am reminded of the old Ivor Tiefenbraun of Linn fame philosophy that he used to create the charisma of the original Linn Sondek LP12 turntable in the UK in the late seventies.

Have you been Kirfed lately?

I’ve come back to Carlton AV after leaving some 2 years ago. I’ve spent the intervening time in a career that makes listening to music with people in a HiFi store seem like a real job, but that’s a different story. What is really interesting is to see the change of direction in the HiFi industry after paying very little attention to it for a few years.

Michael Porter's seminal treatise was a study of how to sustain market position and viability without losing money … it works up to a point.

It’s a bit like Quantum Physics you know, there comes a point where things are small enough where they are neither particle or wave, matter or energy. In small business in Australia the forces of competition and customer discretion are so intense that normal sales and purveyance practice is distorted in the same way that a gravity well in the heart of a large star distorts our physics.