June 2025

What Is Essential To Audiophiles
We're relying on digital music more than ever.
Editorial By Alan Sircom

  The concept of 'Audio Essentials' is at once controversial and ever-changing. It's controversial because there remains a contingent of audio enthusiasts who dismiss everything in the pages of this issue as nonsense on stilts. And it's ever changing because we keep finding more aspects of the audio chain that can benefit from a spot of care and attention.

Care and attention goes beyond simply spending your way out of bad sound; it's about getting the basics right and then seeing what lies beyond. The basics too often seem like a lost art, as indicated by the Gordian Knot of cables that often features at the rear of so many systems. Simply addressing that mess of cables – and getting each component sitting level on a light, yet rigid surface – can make a big difference to even the most humble system.

Similarly, ensuring where your loudspeakers – and, for that matter, you – are positioned in the listening room can bring out the best in a good system, and help smooth out the nasties in a bad one. Reading the instruction manual that came with the loudspeakers and using those recommendations as a starting place is a good start. However, often small and incremental adjustments to the relative position to side and rear walls, and the amount of toe-in beyond the basics helps.

This painstaking and often iterative process of fine-tuning demonstrates two things; it shows how much can be extracted out of any system when you apply yourself, and it teaches you not to make snap decisions. Often the more demanding the system, the more nuanced the fine-tuning process. A loudspeaker designed to accommodate a range of systems and settings might not need the same millimeter-precise adjustments of a demanding high-end model. However, a slow and meticulous set-up yields great rewards.

I'd argue that getting the system 'sorted' before you begin to look at audio's vast aftermarket is a good thing. But be open minded when you explore these essentials; sometimes, they take their time to show what they are capable of. And in some cases, that meticulous set-up needs a rethink when an ancillary component 'opens the window wider.'

In addition, as our systems become ever more refined and rely increasingly on the Ethernet as their source of digital music, so good audio needs more than just a good installation to sound great.

Congratulations go out to the lucky winners of the AIM competition, who each receive a 1.5m NA9 Ethernet cable. Our international trio of Ethernet-improving winners are David Gooding from Ottery St Mary in the UK, Ivan Ruiz of Denver, CO, USA, and James Vallis of British Columbia in Canada, Well done!

Alan Sircom, Editor hi-fi+

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