yes, we have gone black and white, in newsprint no less! and it is free-of-charge once again!

this marks the birth of the first "independent voice" in the hifi industry in malaysia. it is all the more noble because we have become a non-profiteering publication.

2,000 copies will be circulated free at the KLIAV starting friday.

some of the contents:
- convergent entertainment devices (with focus on ps3)
- why midbass is important in car audio
- 2nd hand hifi in malaysia
- personalities in hifi show - a humourous look
- excitement in kampar, perak
- CJ audio on hifi accessories
- short review on stage III magnus interconnect
- choosing the ultimate speakers

many thanks to the following advertisers, for making this issue possible:
- enzer (monsoon)
- audio note
- CJ audio
- C & O audiophile enterprise
- av synergy
- centre circle audio
- home audio design
- dong fong enterprise

make sure you pick up a copy at the show!

keep the passion going!

you would have thought that today's kids and even adults have to many things that clamor for their attention and would be the least interested in reading a long-winded tale about magic, sorcerers and witches.... but jk rowling's "harry potter" proves that if you have a good product, people will still wait patiently for it and pay good money for it. just look at the hype and phenomenon it has created worldwide with its latest edition! and we are talking about people of all ages! people who woke up at 4am and waited outside the bookstores.

today's hifi industry definitely needs a jk rowling phenomenon to resuscitate and revitalize it from its slumber. we need good and excellent-valued products like the NAD 3020, musical fidelity A1, pioneer A400, celestion 3 of yore. we need friendly and helpful dealers who don't look down on you and judge you on your wallet's size. we need more youngsters to embrace this hobby.

jk rowling is a miracle in the publishing and movie industry. hifi manufacturers need similar geniuses to create a breakthru in the industry.

Hi,

Not sure u know about this forum

http://forum.lowyat.net/Audiophiles, although most of them are youngster and do not have the buying power, but they are the more active group in information sharing. Lot of headfiers and DIYER TOO.

The problems of why peoples not visiting local hifi shops, mainly becoz of finance capability and the internet savvy know the pricing elsewhere and after compare with local price, they tend to be disappointed.

You see in this forum peoples rush to SG to buy akg headphones, sennheiser, headphone amps perhaps one day lavry DAC or Benchmark DAC.(http://jaben.wordpress.com/) Well potentially one day full speakers setup. This sg company even sponsor us forum and accepting orders from US. The market is there and wait to be cultivated.

Local dealers need to change the mindset and make frens with new generation to survive.

Even those audiophile cd local shop not doing homework thru internet and depend on supplier to tell who is releasing new albums and their cd usually with high price tag.

Lot of peoples rather shop in yes asia.I one time even being "chun" by one of the hifi shop in city square. I just ask how to differentiate us pressed and local pressed. The woman insulted me that this is trade secret. I think very funny, not that she produce the cd. After this i never visit her shop to buy any cd.

If they hope putting adv in your mag one month and want to see result and i guess is fairy tales. People do not lack info but rather lack money and friendly mentors who cares the pockets of the consumers.I envy hifi climax in taipei, there i can try diff setup and have wide selection of system to suit any budget and they have wide selection of cds and mags. I myself bought 2 issues of their classical music mag
call MUZIK.

Dealers and consumers have diff dream in msia. We all dissapointed with each other.

My 2 cents.

new kid in the block - CTT Audio, puchong

we always encourage young adults (25-35 year-old) to go into hifi. As the hifi population is aging rapidly, we need new blood to help the hifi economy and contribute new ideas.

it is heartening to know that three mid-30s chaps got together and started a 2nd hand hifi enterprise just two months ago. The shop is called CTT audio and it is located in puchong. chia say wei, the 36-year-old partner, told me that their main business is in smart home solutions (eg. security alarm, security door, digital lock, CCTV). since they have some spare space in the office, they thought of utilizing the space fo their hobby.

currently, they got their 2nd hand stock mainly from friends. The CTT guys are are UK hifi supporters hence you can find many famous UK brands in the shop. Brands like Cambridge audio, KEF, monitor audio, marantz, REL subwoofer, epox, NAD are perennial favourties.

soon, CTT audio would also carry new items too, mainly AV stuff.

to help CTT audio, we have linked its website with this blog. You can find their website on the right side of this blog (sponsored links).

please give them a chance. the future of malaysian hifi rests on these people!

call chia say wei of CTT Audio (012-2165678, 03-58820388)

This marks my second chapter in audio journey, not only in terms of scale and potential, but my foray into serious floorstanders and solid state amplification.

Well, I still have my MB Quart floorstanders and Arcam Delta 290, if you consider those serious also, then OK lor. But the Bladelius Thor and ATC SCM20T are something that's rivaling my tube setup, of course, the potential would definitely surpass the tube's.

Finally, after months of seeking high and low, and changing minds a couple of times along the way, at times, almost giving up, I am now a proud owner of ATC SCM20 Tower!


When the owner demoed the speakers to me, it was so familiar! There’s something that I could not sense from the new SL series and entry series. I could sense the musical rawness in Kingsley’s SCM20 and in Yong’s SCM100, but none in the new SCM11, SCM12, SCM19, SCM40 and SCM20SLT.

If my perseverance in pursuing girls is as persistent as how I pursued the ATC SCM20 Tower, I would have long quited audio. Hahaha…

Guys, expect more in this page again!

regine in the studio

i have written enough about my singer for the 2V1G album, winnie ho. it is about about time i introduce you another sweet voice, regine. two of them make up the "2V" (two voices) in the album.

regine is a recording artiste who has one solo album under her belt. she is currently signed to music toxin, the production house that belongs to my producer, jin liang.

regine is a well-rounded artiste. apart from her singing and acting engagement, regine is also a talented songwriter. her compositions are mostly catchy pop tunes. one of her many compositions was recently picked up by gigi leung, the hong kong singer.

regine's voice is sweet (not in the cutesy way but sophisticated way) and soothing, and it provides a good contrast to winnie's raspy and powerful voice. she is very excited about the opportunity to work with roger wang. i am excited to see them in the studio too. there is bound to be plenty of sparks among winnie, regine and roger wang.

the progress of the 2V1G has been slow but rest assured, it will be out before x'mas this year :-)

good news! audio art has accepted my offer to help them to manage a 2nd hand hifi blog. check the sponsored link on the righ side of this blog and you will see link to audio art's blog. just in case, the URL is http://audioartipoh.blogspot.com

we will start populating the blog in a few days' time. so it is not officially ready yet. i will make another announcement later. make sure you broadcast it to all your kakis. i believe in the power of internet viral marketing and word-of-mouth :-)

dong fong still hasn't come back to me but it is quite likely they will join too.

i don't think you have to worry that they are based in ipoh. make a trip there and enjoy the scenery, food and hospitality of ipoh folks. i am sure the respective bosses will be too happy to bring you to the famous lou wong's ngah choi kai (bean sprout chicken)!

paint does matter (part 2)
yes, it is confirmed - sonically, ICI pentalite is better than pearl-glo. the pentalite lends a certain airiness and liveliness to the sound; the gain is perceptibly higher too. music seems to breathe more freely. i tend to think that the pearl-glo paint contains rubber-like content hence absorbs quite a bit of sound. anyway, i am into my 4th day and the sound keeps improving. there is still a bit a hardness left in the mids but i am sure it will go away in days to come.

my av room, with the music lover's wall... repainted with ICI pentalite apple green :-)

can you recognize some of the artistes/bands in the posters?
(faye wong, new order, cocteau twins, jesus and mary chain, spandau ballet, teenage fanclub, dave wang jie)

pete leong, a regular 2nd hand hunter himself, suggested that i should help some big 2nd hand hifi dealers to build a website and list their equipment online, after all the star's audiomart is getting stale and unimaginative.

i thought about it, why not? in fact, i am writing an article about 2nd hand hifi in my forthcoming issue of av xpress. i am going to offer my services to both ah chee (audio art) and ah lin (dong fong), both based in ipoh, to build a blog for them to list their equipment. for the uninitiated, audio art and dong fong enterprise are arguably the two biggest 2nd hand hifi dealers in malaysia.

i have called the two gentlemen and am waiting for their consent. as usual, i am doing this for the love of hifi and i won't charge them a single sen. it may sound unbelievable but it is true.

if that happens, then you all are gonna benefit. you, you and you.

Some readers asked what happened to their beloved audio blog as they have not been able to get thru days ago from China.

So I checked and re-sent them the URL again, fearing that they might have gotten the URL wrong. Still, no luck!

Since I have no recollection of bashing MIC products, I have no idea why has our beloved audio blog been blocked.

I know I have been preaching a lot of hi-end products from the West and not been writing a lot, hmmm, or never, on MIC products. But that does not earn us a place in their block list lor.

Is the Chinese government scared of the people buying Western products, become pro-west or they want more people to buy MIC product? Maybe some MIC dealers could expose me on their products.

i just repainted my whole house. based of advice from wong tatt yew, i changed from ICI pearl-glo paint to pentalite, which is supposed to be better for the sonics.

lo and behold, when i switched on my system last night (with all the positionings and furnitures intact), it sounded vastly different and dare i say, slightly worse than be before. the midrange becomes brittle, hollow and slightly grainy and sibilance was high; it just doesn't have the solidity and concentration of the previous sound.

i am no sure if that is caused by the new coat of paint not fully dried up but it certainly is an ear-opening experience for me. i suspect the moisture in the paint creates havoc in the sound reflection on the wall and maggie being a dipole, is one well of a sensitive speaker.

p/s i tried listening again tonight, it is much better now with the mids getting fuller and more bodied. amazing!

latest update: this is the 3rd day, and the sound has more or less come back in full force. i marvel the experience!

a couple of my friends, who are puzzled with my persistent problems with electricity, consulted some senior electrical engineer friends of theirs who are well-versed in this field. two of them came back with the same answer - a possibility of TNB's power factor. i don't have an EE degree but basically it means that the voltage and current have different leads and lags. apparently, it is something that no power conditioning or regenerating devices can rescue.

the perfect power factor is 1, which supposedly means that the voltage and current coming in is in sync.

to alleviate the power factor problems, one could build capacitor bank in parallel the the mains. i don't really know how this can be done. i need to do some research, including writing to dick mccarthy of richard gray power company.

one my friend, bernard, reports that by inserting high-values capacitors into his chang lightspeed power gang, it helps to reduce this bad electricity phenomenon.

i shall report more on this in the next few weeks.

with the new "river" series of interconnects out in the market, i now dare to nit-pick on the previous generation of dbs cables, without the fear of offending the dealer. the cheetah silver interconnect (RM4,800 for 1m), 2nd ranked after sky, is a minor flop in terms of tonal balance. no matter how much one tweaks, one just can't rid of the mild emphasis in the mids. it was very irritating!

truth be told, the cheetah can't even compete with its predecessor, the copper-made and my once long-time reference anaconda and the silver-made amazon, eventho' these two cables are notorious for their long burning-in time and fast cooling-off characters.

but bill low is not one to sit on his comfortable laurels, i am sure he knows the weaknesses of cheetah hence he keeps the sky intact and replaces the cheetah and panther with a totally new "river" series which includes colorado, columbia and niagara (in ascending order). the metal & carbon-loaded synthetics composite used must have something to do with taming the brightness - it is only my guess, don't flame me for that.

at RM5K++ for 1m, the niagara holds great promise. i am hoping i could get one to try on in the near future. i would love to try all the silver cables in the world!

this is an expensive toy, called "demag", that is supposed to demagnetize LPs, any CDs, DVDs, SACDs, CD-Rs and DVD-Audio discs. this device also is great for removing the built-up magnetism in interconnects, speaker cables and power cords.

yes, it works even for cables! the demag removes the residual magnetic fields that build up over time in any cable.

it is claimed that demag will result in an increase in resolution and a more natural sense of “flow” to all of your records and discs.

but at usd1,800 a pop, only deep pockets need to apply! it is reported that hugo's boss (pun intended), eik yew goh (spelling) is so convinced of the benefits of the demag that he has bought a unit to be used for all his recordings. btw, congrats to mr. eik for his huge success of the LPCD series of audiophile cds.

for poor souls like me, i have to rely on my XLO and DENSEN discs for those all-important demos.

if someone tells you that he/she likes danny chan (chan pak keung), chances are he/she must be well over 30s or even 40s. danny chan was famous for his goody-two-shoes image and motivational (albeit sentimental) ballads. many students who grew up in the 80s must have heard of at least one danny chan's hits.

danny chan was a permanent idol of mine in my secondary school days. ACS ipoh being an english-medium school, most of my classmates were true-blue "english-educated" ones and very few of them listened to cantonese songs. it took someone as courageous as me to influence my classmates into liking danny chan. very soon, most of my circle of classmates had already bought cassettes of danny chan's early albums. see, there were signs that i would be a good music reviewer even at that early age:-)

danny chan died of drug overdose in 1992. it has been 15 years, and i still occasionally dig out my danny chan collections, especially during late-night listening, and enjoy in reminiscing the good old times. but most of my memories were bittersweet ones rather really upbeat ones cos i refuse to believe how times flew, as his music reminds me of my 2nd girlfriend and my happiest days as a student.

somehow the new-generation singers in HK, without excess baggages like us mid-lifers, don't see the sentimentalism and nostalgia in danny chan's music. this music theatre tribute to danny chan is brimming with upbeat optimism and happy music, and i like it this way. chet lam yat fung (http://desirableaudio.blogspot.com/2006/07/folksy-gem.html) was last introduced in this blog as a popular folk-singer in HK. and his albums are generally good sounding, sonic wise. i like the way some of danny's ballads are turned into pop-rock tunes with classical baroque style prelude. perhaps, this should be the happy way to remember danny, instead of sulking that he had left us too early... danny would be happy that his later-year intepreters remember him that way.

let's not waste time further, this is a refreshing cd. if you are a danny chan fan, listen to how creative these cover versions are. if you are not, then discover why yesteryear's cantopop was much much better than today's. seriously, modern cantopop is pure crap...

the bummer is - it is selling at RM80 in rock corner (import cd price huh)! you can find it cheaper in yes! asia online site. i bought mine in HK for only RM40.

click to enlarge.

famous journalist-cum-writer lam yuet (lin yue) from sin chew jit poh interviewed me on the "trials and tribulations" of starting av xpress.

article appears on the 9th july 2007 monday edition of sin chew.

click to enlarge.

in fine print - "life was so much easier when we had single-ended triodes"

i started playing hifi in 1988 and i have seen the industry going thru major ups and downs. this current scene we are seeing now, is the worst of it all. very few people are playing hifi, even fewer people are buying. generally hifi has been relegated to a very niche and exclusive hobby. as a new and late-entry-into-the-scene publisher, i don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. i shudder every time i think of the future of hifi and hifi publication in malaysia.

today i had tea with one of my dealers. he regretfully told me that he is considering closing down his business. "this market is deader than dead; i am losing money every month", he lamented. another dealer in city square told me that he is fed up of having no customers visiting his shop. the signs are all there.

what can we do? very little or a lot, depending how to see it.

after some serious soul-searching. we want to turn the table around.

it is going to be like this:

the magazine is going to take on a new and unprecedented direction. we are going to become the 1st ever totally independent, "underground", free, and self-financed magazine in malaysia, with very little ad revenue. in particular, we want to help those small dealers with no advertising budget.

to drastically cut down costs, we are going to be using newsprint (newspaper quality) and it will be in black and white tone. we will write whatever we feel like; promote and review whatever we feel like; publish whenever we feel like (no deadlines nor fixed frequency)and we won't even bother to edit our articles. it is going to be raw, rough but original and spirited.

there will still be ads. availability of the ad space will be on a first-come-first-served basis. the payment of the ads will be totally by voluntary donation. the proceeds of the donation will go towards funding the printing costs, which is peanuts compared to using the kind of quality paper now. me and my contributors won't get a single sen from writing. everything is voluntary.

sceptics (there are many) will ask: aren't you silly in doing this kind of charity? you think that all dealers will appreciate your efforts? sceptics will remain sceptics la. just like if you don't believe that cables make a difference, you won't be convinced even if they do. actually, that is simply because your system has not enough resolution la :-)

we cannot always take and take from the society. sometimes, it is good to give back. it is good for one's karma. and it also makes you a better person.

this is our greatest service to the hifi industry in malaysia. a record, if ever there was one.

to those who still complain after this (about our standard of english, our distribution, magazine not thick enough etc etc), we will just stick up our middle finger and tell you where to go. oppss...sorry for a momentary lapse of manner and refinement :-)

reformasi!

"those people who buy mercedes are stupid!i am not stupid!", rebutted one audiophile in athens when asked if he feels stupid to have spent 70,000 euros on his system.

"i stoppped being normal when i reached the age of 35 - i became an audiophile", confessed another, who is in the audiophile club of athens.

"i am normal! those who don't play hifi are abnormal!", yet another rebuttal from another audiophile who spent 200,000 euros on his system.

ladies and gentlemen, watch this beautiful video directed by ken barnes, featuring a group of super high-end audiophiles based in athens, greece and be amazed by their perfectionist attitude and dedication to the art of hifi.

will such utopia ever happen in malaysia?

note: if your internet is slow, it may take ages to download. so leave you computer on, and come back after 30-45 minutes. trust me, you will enjoy the video.

this is damn farnie.....

does rowan remind you of any local hifi dealer or does the customer remind you of any of your friends, or even yourself? hahahaha....

many people don't know that before rowan atkinson made it big as mr.bean, he was already quite famous with comedy show "not the nine o'clock news" and "black adder".