These are exciting times in hifi land. Meridian launched MQA as a future standard for streaming, high definition vinyl caused controversy with the audio purist, approximately 500 exhibitors showcased their products during the sold out Munich’s High End 2016 event and earlier this year hifi-opinions.com saw the light. The latter was overlooked by the general public. Other trends seemed more important for the masses.

These events were not published on hifi-opinions.com. To be honest, at this moment only a small amount of articles show on our new website, and these articles have only reached a limited audience, with the exception of a few peak moments on social media when they are shared.

One event did get full attention: the birth of my son. For the first time I am not only responsible for my own life, but also for the live of our newborn miracle. Such event turns your world upside down, demands adaptability and consumes energy, while wife and son need lots of support. In such moments hifi & high end audio fade into the background.

We are now a couple of months later and get to know our son a little better every day, getting closer to each other one step at the time. Father now has got (some) free time again to spend with that other newborn: hifi-opinions.com. Similiar to the support of maternity care after birth, hifi-opinions.com has received external backup as well. Tini Van den Broek is passionate about high fidelity since the seventies and spent around 15 years as a professional hifi consultant. He will strengthen our team by writing component reviews and general hifi articles. His prime article for our website is a comparative test of the Audio GD M7 DAC versus the Audio GD M7 NOS, a worldwide first about this component, which you can read here. Regarding music opinions connoisseur Theo J. Schraven will regularly write album reviews. At the time of writing this editorial, he is working on his first article. Third strenght of our team is Rody Mulder, an audio passionate with extensive technical background. Besides running his own company The Audio Clinic, where he applies his skills on component upgrades, he will use this technical background to give the readers of hifi-opinions.com comprehensive technical information about the components under review.

A few months after hifi-opinions.com saw the light, a strong team of writers has gathered around the website. Writers each with their own specialty, motivated to create quality content. Hopefully this can cause visitor numbers to rise and let hifi-opinions.com grow on the masses. Every newborn grows one step at the time, day by day. But one thing is certain: these are exciting times.

Dries Van Hooydonck

Founder & Chief Editor, hifi-opinions.com