Steve Harris

Half a lifetime ago, I was the youthful editor of another hi-fi magazine in the UK. One day in 1979, I was visited by a senior executive from Goodmans, who explained that the firm’s next hi-fi speaker range would not be built in its own British factory, but would be bought in from Jamo of Denmark. It was a sign of the times for the company which, in the 1950s, had been ‘Europe’s largest Manufacturer and the World’s largest Exporters of High Fidelity Loudspeakers’.

Whenever the BBC makes changes to the sacred rituals of Radio 3, howls of protest follow. New scheduling introduced in February did bring the usual cries of 'dumbing down'. Personally, the changes didn't bother me very much because I'd got so much into the habit of time-shifting my radio listening.

Not so long ago the idea of a hi-fi system costing a million pounds would have raised eyebrows and hackles. Such systems might exist, we thought, but only in the secret hideaways of a few eccentric billionaires. But today you can have a good chance of hearing a million-pound sound just by walking in to a hi-fi show.