carrie bradshaw of audio journalism

as i sit here in my kampung's internet cafe catching up with your comments, i feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction. what started as a hobby has grown into a sizeable force. not since the days of perfect pitch (the sun newspaper's hifi pullout) has malaysian english-speaking audiophile readers (and readers from abroad) been so united towards the media, in this case, an alternative media (blog) that is gaining momentum worldwide.

and yesterday, i bumped twice into a regular reader, lim, in audio art and dong fong ipoh. he told me that because of reading this blog, his passion for hifi is re-ignited and he is now shopping for a preamp. he said before reading my mag and the blog he didn't know that ipoh has so many good hifi shops! he ended up buying the pass labs x2.5 preamp from dong fong. i felt a deep sense of achievement. hey, this blog is influential, ok? ;-) thanks, lim, for your support and encouragement.

on the eve of chinese new year 2008, i would like to express my heartfelt thanks to you readers who have been supporting this humble blog for the past few months/years and take this opportunity to share with you my plan and wishes for the blog, my magazine av xpress and the hifi community in malaysia.

[the blog - desirable audio boutique]
we would like to become the carrie bradshaw of audio journalism. carrie bradshaw of sex and the city, acted by sarah jessica parker, is a thirtysomething single woman journalist in manhattan, who has a very popular column in the local tabloid called "sex and the city". in person, carrie is witty, sexy, sassy, neurotic, humourous, articulate, intelligent, sophisticated and liberal-thinking. her entertaining column is a mirror of carrie's sparkling personality. carrie dares to make mockery of the desperation and pathetic situation of single women in manhattan and she adopts a cool attitude towards sex and relationships.

hifi has been considered by many as a niche hobby for the geeks. general perception is that it is expensive, boring and strictly for the reclusive and anti-social geeks. and hifi mags and other online hifi resources, are equally boring and technical. we want to change all that stereotyped perceptions. we want to be fun and enjoyable to read! we don't want to take ourselves too seriously. it is a hobby after all and hobby should be fun!

our vision is to become the fave online site for audiophiles and music lovers, and the "defacto" and chosen media for all hifi dealers and distributors in malaysia and singapore. we want this blog to become a place for product announcement, industry update, advertorials, mini reviews, sale/discount announcement, latest news, manufacturer's visit, customer's home visit, classifieds, music reviews... anything and everything that's related to hifi. of course, along the way, we will share our personal experiences with you readers and that's where the personal touches come from. even when we do industry update or advertorial, we would never cut and paste from internet except for technical specs; we would give our personal views or hands-on experiences on that product, that's our added value to the dealers and the readers.

to the readers of this blog, our hope is that you keep giving us your valuable comments and at the same time, learn to appreciate others who give diametrically opposing views from you. it is all the more exciting now that that we have readers from singapore, US, japan and UK - their views are so exciting and different, their experiences so unique; we can learn so much from them. hifi is always subjective; a man's meat is another's poison; different courses for different horses. let's learn to be accomodating and open-minded. we believe we can thrive in diversity!

[the magazine - av xpress]
we would re-print some of the blog posts here in the magazine. the reasons is because many readers of av xpress have not gone online and slowly we would like to drive them to the blog. secondly, we are seriously lack of contributors. so we hope that you don't mind us repeating some of the blog posts in the magazine.

having said that, we would intensify the music contents in av xpress so regular readers of the blog will still get to enjoy some fresh contents on music. to this end, we have engaged a couple of heavyweight music reviewers to write on music. you can expect some interesting music articles/reviews starting this issue.

remember this - without music, hifi is meaningless and life is a mistake ;-)

[the hifi community in malaysia]
we hope that the audiophiles in malaysia would put aside their egos, politics, differences, beliefs, religions and opinions, and come forward to embrace this wonderful hobby with no personal agenda. hifi is a communal hobby; it is just no fun playing alone in the closet. audiophiles should come out from their closets and share. audiophiles should influence more people to this hobby. we want many more people to play hifi.

we welcome you to give us tips, heads-up or even harmless gossips on the industry. we want you to act like little birds to feed information to this blog for the benefit of the community. to extend it further, you can even recommend to us your audiophile friends who would like their systems to be featured in this blog. i know this is far-fetched (for malaysian audiophiles are generally publicity shy) but if you are generous enough to share, we would give your the space and exposure!

we know many of you are well read, especially from internet sources where not all info is true and reliable. learn how to sieve the good info from the bad info. put that good knowledge to practical use and get more hands-on experience, instead of becoming an "academic" audiophile. an academic audiophile is one who is full of paper knowledge and theory (and full of himself!) but whose own hifi system and listening skills are falling short. please don't hop from forum to forum, using many nicks, and rattle out opinions irresponsibly. learn to be a refined, magnanimous and educated audiophile, in short.

we have so much more to write. ultimately we want you to have lotsa fun with hifi. let's usher in the year of the rat with the hope that our hifi will sound even better in the next 12 months!

gong xi fa cai to all of you!