Nowadays it looks like we’re all listening to music from compressed files. Spotify and the like are of course easy and convenient, but surely you miss the authentic details? From where we sit, it looks like the number of people who are truly interested in top-end audio and are willing to pay what it takes can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Why is that?

Maybe we have all become somewhat jaded by the tsunami of audio and video all around us, and we simply don’t find it all that important. Of course, the quality of typical audio and video equipment has improved enormously, so you don’t have to spend as much now to get a good sound system. However, that is not the attitude that distinguishes the true audiophiles – the absolute determination to do your utmost to extract the last bit of subtle nuance from your amplifier and speakers.

Elektor has a strong history of audio projects, and you are doubtless familiar with some of our legendary designs – including Edwin, Ekwin, Crescendo and Preamplifier 2012. Unfortunately, the number of audio publications has dropped over the years, in part due to declining reader interest. However, attractive audio projects keep popping up, and we see that there are still quite a few fans of high-quality DIY audio. Many readers have built the Q-Watt Audio Power Amplifier published several years ago, and we have sold a considerable number of kits for the Supra 2.0 Phono Preamp, despite the high price of its top-end components.
So there is still hope – there are still a lot of true audiophiles amongst us.