Following my recent Sunday Thoughts pieces about the way music brings people together and the joys of listening to other people bellowing into their phones in airport lounges, I received an email from Sheldon in Canada. He began by saying he might be lucky enough to squeeze in another couple of motorbike rides before the […]
We travel a fair bit and we’re coming up to one of the busiest times of the year for that particular activity. However, while we may be travelling, the work doesn’t stop. News comes in, emails need answering, and telephone calls need to be made and taken. I also need to write my Sunday Thoughts […]
It’s been a hectic week, and the next couple of months promise to be equally hectic, with lots of travel to visit shows, events, and clients. Fridays are always busy here at HiFi PiG Towers, but this week we decided we’d take Friday afternoon off. Once we’d eaten lunch (borlotti bean stew, sweet potatoes and […]
This is likely to be a bit of a rambling Sunday Thoughts because it’s about a few different things that all come together at the end…I hope…but who knows? It’s a Sunday Thoughts piece and, by their very nature – mostly being written on a Sunday morning – they can be a bit free-form. A […]
No, not the picket-line crossing ones, the other ones. You must have had this happen to you when you were younger, or maybe it still happens to you. You had a slip or grazed yourself, you bled, the scrape healed over, and an impossible-to-ignore scab knitted over the wound. As a child and as an […]
Regular readers of Hifi PiG reviews will be well aware that we recently took delivery of the new EC 5 preamplifier from Electrocompaniet and, whilst the remote control that comes with it is pretty simple, it matches the product, looks nice, feels nice, and does exactly what it needs to do. Nothing particularly revolutionary there, […]
So, it’s that time of year when the kids go back to school. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been observing the growing sense of relief on parents’ faces in supermarkets as the blessed date draws closer. You can sense that they have had quite enough and that, if they didn’t have a specific day […]
I first heard about this particular bit of kit I’m on about in this Sunday Thoughts piece at the last ever Munich High End show. I’m not going to tell you what it is because I’m currently halfway through reviewing it, and that’s not really what this is about, anyway. If you follow me on […]
I was buying some jeans and a sweatshirt from UNIQLO earlier this week and, when I had completed my online order (the nearest actual UNIQLO shop is several hours away), a pop-up popped up. That is what pop-ups do. This one was a bit different, and I did actually click through to check it out. […]
Lin and I were at my cousin Roger’s (pictured) 60th birthday bash in Sheffield last night, and a couple of things happened that I thought were worth mentioning. Neither was earth-shattering, and I don’t think either will bring about world peace or persuade people to stop posting angry comments on Facebook (though you never know […]
Regular readers will be aware that I like a bit of a mix on the old Technics. I’ve been DJing with vinyl for nigh on 40 years now, although these days it is done entirely at home and purely for my own amusement, though I have a cunning plan on that front. Back in the […]
Yesterday we did something we’d told ourselves we probably wouldn’t do again. Every year there’s an event around these parts called Art in the Chapels. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. A collection of artists each takes over a chapel and exhibits their work, with visitors following one of several suggested routes from […]
There’s this expectation, isn’t there, that if you’re a HiFi reviewer or one of those blogging types, you spend every waking hour listening to music. The image you probably have is of someone permanently sat in the sweet spot with a laptop or a notepad, and a mug of coffee, endlessly swapping amplifiers, speakers and […]
Given lastnight/this morning’s incredible football match against France and England, I considered writing something about that, but the connection to HiFi just wouldn’t come, and I’d already written much of the following, anyway. I was having a look at Facebook the other day when I came across a post we’d shared on the HiFi PiG […]
Regular readers will probably have noticed that Sunday Thoughts has been conspicuous by its absence over the past couple of weeks. One week was because nothing had come to mind that I thought was worth writing about. I could have sat down and bashed out a piece for the sake of it, but that has […]
It’s Father’s Day, which has got me thinking about my dad and music. Not HiFi, mind. Dad never really got the whole HiFi thing. He did get music, but the thought of spending the price of a half-decent second-hand car on a pair of loudspeakers horrified him. He had an uncanny ability to look at […]