By To say I can’t believe that it has been three years since we started FutureAudiophile.com might be a little bit clichéd, but is completely truthful. 2025 has been an absolutely brutal year, with the Palisades Fire that destroyed our home. 10 months later, we are still waiting for the money needed to restore our home to January 6, 2025 levels, which is the standard of our State Farm policy. Dealing with the world’s largest insurance company, which is hellbent on not paying even a fraction of the homeowner’s policy that they sold to me and now charges a mere $1,475 per month for the lack of coverage thereof, ghosting us for a month at a time (more than once), as well as using our $475,000 in rent money as leverage to get us to make a settlement that would leave our home, my home office and, most importantly, my listening room likely unusable. I encouraged all of our readers to make sure that their audiophile system is separately insured (read my very important article here), as I had with my gear covered via a real insurance company, The Hartford. I did the same with my art collection with USAA and they actually pay their claims. If you switch away from State Farm, please take my advice and do so. Chubb, The Hartford and USAA are all real insurance companies, but none of them will write policies for 90272.
How Are We Doing Meeting the Goals of the FutureAudiophile.com Mission Statement?
The whole premise that I cooked up with our all-star advisory board of Mark Ormiston (the most successful retailer in specialty AV history at Definitive Audio in Seattle), Sandy Gross (co-founder of Polk Audio, Definitive Technology and GoldenEar speakers) and Marc Finer (the guy who helped Sony launch the Compact Disc in 1983) was to find a way to bring the audiophile hobby to a younger audience. Historically, the audiophile hobby was started by, designed by, and purchased by Baby Boomers. As these OG audiophiles naturally advance in age, there are not nearly enough new young people who know about or have experienced the joy of living in their musical art. The record store is pretty much gone in most cities. The stereo store is also an endangered species in so many parts of this great nation of ours. Not being able to experience what a top-performing audiophile system can do makes the investment look outrageous, whereas Boomer and Gen Xers rarely questioned the luxury goods prices for stereo components.
With a whole lot of humility, I can report to you that it is far more difficult to reach younger potential audiophiles than I ever dreamed of. The price of audiophile gear is off-putting, but access to the experience of hearing a good audiophile system is more critical. There are specific ways of writing that engage younger people better. Bullet points, bolding, thoughtfully linking to meaningful online resources, and well-crafted headers all add to the appeal of a modern website that aspires to reach younger people.
Perhaps the most important value to bring to the table in this modern era is editorial and publishing integrity. For example, we have affiliate programs running with Crutchfield as well as Amazon.com. Many readers are happy to have easy access to buy gear right from our review pages, but disclosing that we actually make a few pennies on the transactions is a key concept. It costs nothing to be honest with your readers. When you deliver on your side, the readers often reward you with making purchases from your pages.
FutureAudiophile.com’s Special Sauce aka: the Editorial Staff
This isn’t my first rodeo in online specialty audio/video publishing, as this is start of my third group of online AV magazines. AVRev.com and ModernHomeTheater.com were started in 1996 and sold in 2008. HomeTheaterRevuew.com and AudiophileReview.com started soon thereafter and, 11 years into that project and 100 days before COVID, I sold that group of publications. I never thought that I would take on the challenge of starting another AV magazine, but after 1.5 years as an exec in a 48-billion-dollar-a-year corporation (I had never even had a resume before that!!!), I realized that playing with stereo gear is a far better, healthier and more rewarding way to spend my workday, thus the origin of FutureAudiophile.com. When my non-compete was up after three years, I had put the plan in place to take on the challenge of paving the road forward for a hobby that needs new blood more than the hobbyists know. And I’ve never looked back or had any regrets.
The biggest success in our first three years has been the way that we crafted our editorial team. Most AV publications pay (or make them work for free – note: we pay) writers who are older, and that is fine for them. On our team we have a Ph.D. from MIT in Mike Prager, who is over 70. We have Paul Wilson, who was our editor at AudiophileReview.com, who is in his mid-60s. We also have Eric Forst (Masters in Audiology), Andrew Dewhirst (pro writer and tech exec in Canada), and Michael Zisserson (a speaker designer with an EE background who was trained in audiophile topics by ex-Stereophile writer and classical recording engineer John Marks), all of whom are Millennials. To take matters over the top, I recruited Nasim Abu-Dagga to our team. He brings a Gen-Y voice to the publication. Boomer and Gen X voices are great and often quite experienced, but the younger voices reflect totally new ways that people see the audiophile hobby. They reflect new values. They present their opinions in totally new voices.
While bringing in new generations of writers to our editorial staff is a big pat on my back, the concept of having a relevant and diverse is likely our biggest success so far. AI is wonderful and I use it often as a research tool, but AI writing is not good enough for you, our readers, and we NEVER utilize it to write our articles. Humans will always write our content. Period.
The biggest editorial staff challenge is finding someone to represent the female gender. I’ll never forget how proud I was in mid-2018 when our editor at HomeTheaterReview.com left to go to The Wirecutter (NYTimes.com). It was a tearful goodbye, but they were tears of joy on my part, as I was, and still am, so very proud of Adrienne Maxwell. We get to see each other at CEDIA shows and that is so great. Finding new younger female writers has been an outrageously hard challenge. I’ve worked with two “women in tech” groups in Northern California who work with a lot of female recording engineers. On the whole, they think our hobby is all about voodoo and bullshit (not true, but it is how they see it). I have yet to find the right person. If you have a lead for me, email or call me, as I would be forever grateful. Having a diverse group of voices is editorial gold.
As Yes Once Sang, “Change, Changing Places …”
What does the future look like for the audiophile hobby? Well, that is our bag. The future is going to challenge many of the worst parts of our hobby/business. For example: the idea that old technology is somehow better than new is a concept that needs to die with the Boomers. Look at Class-D amps today. They can sound 90-plus percent like the world’s best-exotic Class A amps at a fraction of the price, with little energy used, without weight or need for fancy heat sinks . They output huge amounts of power from super-small amps. They are total game-changers and the establishment is trying to fight the concept when younger enthusiasts are seeing a chance to get the most from their system at a reasonable price and they are all in. Argent Pur, Mytek, Peachtree Audio, Orchard Audio and Buckeye Amps all run out of amps to sell because semiconductor amps are just that good. I have a $1,199 Peachtree Audio Hypex amp driving my Bowers & Wilkins 802 D4s, which are $31,000 a pair, and they sound fantastic. Will they sound better than my $32,000 Pass Lab XA160.8 (I spent some of my fire insurance money on a present for me that is totally over-the-top)? Not a chance, but the difference in price is like a Bentley versus a Hyundai when the Hyundai goes 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds.
Traditionalists and retailers alike fight CHI-FI. That is a gross mistake. CHI-FI has its issues and we’ve written about them, but these products come with so little cost and so much upside that they are the perfect option for new enthusiasts to own compelling, high performance and often exotic technologies. The more they own and the more that they experience, the more that they get into the hobby. Audiophile retailers don’t like CHI-FI, because they don’t get good support, they provide little margin and are sold direct online to consumers. They aren’t seeing these often throw-away products as the badly needed entry points to the hobby that they are. A $800 CHI-FI DAC like a Topping D90 III Sabre (read the review) can give you 90-plus percent of the performance of my $12,000 Bricasti M1-S2 pro audio DAC. That is value that you can’t argue with and performance that wasn’t on the table, say, five years ago.
Headphones are a gigantic business and everybody needs them, when not everybody needs a stereo system. Too few audiophile retailers stock and/or sell headphones (specifically wireless ones) that customers need for work, the gym, travel and more. Good audiophile headphones are a perfect place for young audiophiles to start in the hobby, even if some traditionalists can’t help but be snobs about new concepts and components that impact the audiophile hobby.
So, What Can Readers Expect from FutureAudiophile.com in the Next Few Years?
- We will create more professional audiophile content (free to read) than any other respected publication. We do 102 feature reviews and 52 featured news stories a year. That’s a lot and it isn’t going down anytime soon with our publication.
- Video was on the verge of happening, but the fire ended that in 2025. This doesn’t mean that it ends the project forever. I am one month into living back in Los Angeles to oversee the remediation and abatement of our home. I am not ready for video yet, but I’ve got a professional plan on how to do it going forward, as this is a 2026 goal.
- We will have the most diverse editorial staff in the business now and into the future. I am always on the lookout for quality content creators, regardless of age and gender. We’ve rocked this in our first three years, and we will continue to rock this in the future.
- Audiophile value is an overriding theme with our aspirational readers, as well as FutureAudiophile.com editors. Do we review some expensive gear? Yes we do – just as Road & Track will put a Ferrari on the cover of their print magazine. We also review $100 integrated amps, a concept that some oligarch audio companies use as a reason for why they won’t support us with ad dollars (their loss). Younger readers and real-world readers put value at the top of the factors that make them buy more gear. We get that and will cater to that every chance that we can.
- More sweepstakes are on the way. What’s better than reading about audiophile gear? How about getting some for free from FutureAudiophile.com? We had about six months with no sweeps (blame that on the fires, too), but that is changing. We’ve got three more lined up now, with many more to come. If you are concerned about your data and entering, we ask the minimum that we can from you and we protect your information strongly. It is cool to enter out sweepstakes every time you see one.
- We are donating an entire audiophile system to the Shallomay Audio Lab at Harvard University on February 11, 2026. This was the first idea that I came up with when I moved back to Los Angeles from Orange County this fall. Harvard has a 33-year-old Ph.D. running the lab, and he’s way into our hobby. He bought Magnepans and McIntosh for the kids who he allows to use the system to explore music and technology. His new system from us is looking like it will have SVS Ultra Evolution speakers, two SVS SB-17 subs, a stack of T+A electronics, a VPI turntable and more. The exact details are still being worked out. We’ve written about what our friend Ray Kimber has done at Weber State (read about Ray’s generosity here) with the Music Industry program at Utah University. We’ve also written about the insanely good audiophile system that the kids at the University of the South (read about this college system that you can hear, too) can experience (big Wilsons, sick electronics, an incredible turntable with two tonearms, serious acoustical treatments, etc.), and both serve as places for young people to learn about and, more importantly, experience the best of the hobby. Now we are doing the same thing at a little college in Boston called Harvard. Never accuse me of going small. That’s not how I roll and this project, while time-consuming and very expensive, has been so fun. It is also a total proof of concept for the magazine. That is a win-win if I’ve ever seen one while, at the same time, the philanthropy of the project feels good, too. Now, if my 13-year-old can just get his grades up (this is a joke, as a donation doesn’t get your kid into the likes of Harvard or Stanford, etc.), I can make a phone call for him!!!
Some Final Thoughts on the Future of FutureAudiophile.com …
The first three years of FutureAudiophile.com have been some of the best, most rewarding times of my 25-plus-year career in online AV publishing. I am working with EEAT (engagement, expertise, authority and transparency) consultants in London to learn how to tweak FutureAudiophile.com like a $1,000,000 audiophile system. There is much more work to do on that front, which will start later in the year. We need to focus more on social media. No AV publication is better at SEO (search engine optimization) than we are, and we are killing it on that front now and will keep it up into the future. We just love when people link to us, but that’s not the main point. We will be pimping the best gear in the hobby, based on what you folks want to read about. We ALWAYS want to hear from you as to what products that you want to see reviewed next. Comment below or email me, as your opinion means the world to us.
In the end, our dedication is to you, the reader. We plan to bring you the most and the best relevant reviews and stories for decades to come. We plan to lead this industry/hobby through its first massive demographic challenge. This is no small challenge, but with your readership, enthusiasm and moral support – we are poised for even more success in the years to come because, without you, there is no reason for our work. We are here for you.
How do you think we have done in our first three years? (Don’t hold back – we aren’t just fishing for compliments here.) What would you like to see reviewed in the coming months and years, be they specific products and/or categories? We LOVE to hear from you and will approve your comments (this keeps the garbage from mucking up our content) ASAP.
