Michael on the Podium: Products of the Year

By Michael Jones

December 2008

Well Tempered Amadeus
Apple iTunes 8

While publishing a hi-fi magazine involves certain responsibilities, it also allows certain privileges and freedoms. Highlighting great sounding equipment is a tremendous privilege and is one I highly value.

And the freedom of writing about whatever I damned well please is a freedom that many writers would love to have.

Today, I have the freedom to choose and write about my two products of the year. They may appear to be very different, but both are examples of clever, innovative thinking.

Well Tempered Amadeus turntable

Some 25 years after the introduction of CD, sales of turntables and vinyl are still strong. The introduction of the Well Tempered Amadeus in 2008 is a tremendous asset to those of us who still love their LPs and want to get the best from them.

Clever thinking has produced a turntable that offers sound quality far better than it’s relatively modest price would suggest. My review in this issue raves about the turntable.

Apple iTunes 8

Recently I’ve been examining computer based music systems. Partly this is professional – I need to know about this growing segment of hi-fi. And partly it is personal – I will be away from my hi-fi system for several months and wanted a way to take my music with me.

It quickly became obvious that Apple’s iTunes software would be my choice. Like most Apple hardware and software, iTunes is intuitive easy to use, combined with great power behind the interface. Some of the other solutions I’ve looked at were like devolving from a modern computer operating system such as Mac OSX back to doddery old Windows 3.1.

Apple has set the pace with computer-based music. While iTunes may not be perfect – what software ever is – it makes other alternatives look clumsy and wrong. Best of all, iTunes is free.