Spark in the Dark, the First Explosive ReMusic Award

Orchestra Pit
20.02.2012

ReMusic has to be included in the Absolute Beginners for many reasons. First of all, ReMusic is the first Italian hi-fi magazine in electronic format only (no paper) and translated in good part into English and Chinese. Besides, even if many of our collaborators have been writing for paper magazines or have been running tests for more than forty years – I personally started when I was thirteen – being editors is quite different. Only after few months from our debut, we can say we are lucky. In a short time, we have been able to test la crème de la crème and meet many champions.

 

So we have thought to create a warning signal to praise this typology of devices, born from a sparkle of an idea.


ReMusic Spark AwardThis is Spark in the Dark.

 

A sparkle in the darkness. A sparkle that illuminates for a second the experience of someone who thinks he has listened to everything but, nonetheless, is still ready to marvel and get involved. A sparkle that has made us starting on the listening chair. A sparkle that has fascinated and surprised us, maybe just for a second, as we imagine happened after the first sparkle of creation*. Spark is a signal, although small or brief, capable of making resonate the strings of our soul, of our curiosity and of our amazement.

 

The Spark award will be assigned to any device, product or brand we have the chance to test and recognize as something special for a detail, an extremism, a daydream. We want to exaggerate and take into account also the famous and successful brands, if worthy. One of our rigorous premises is, in fact, the possibility of giving this signal to notorious brands or not. The first Spark award given to an Italian loudspeaker manufactured by a company in its embryonic stage confirms this: the Janas Lucia by Arte Acustica. Actually, more than a speaker a true challenge: Roberto Rocchi has written a review (read here) about this three-way without crossover. Well, during these few months, we have met other interesting particularities. The first one is the S.I. Audio Cult/I (read here):an integrated tube amplifier with triodes, as well as OTL, that is without output transformers, and even OCL, that is without capacitors on the signal path. Another bright spot is the preamplifier Zanden 3000 (read here), which has confirmed the value and the importance of the input and output coupling transformers. To these devices, although after the test, we want to give our Spark awards.

 

This is our “work in progress” first award. Following our “Spark” as an instantaneous prize, on impulse and on emotion, there will be the Out of Phase Award, an official short list that will ideally summarize our editorial work.

 

Il premio Oscar

Out of Phase Award because ReMusic is a webzine, let us say a bit undercurrent, which bucks for a lot. Of course, there is a great deal of work to do. ReMusic is made by audio enthusiasts for audio enthusiasts. It tries to be professional and pleasant. It has big photos. It wants to be known all around the world with its English and Chinese versions. But it gives up something, because it does not want to review the devices that do not reach high standards in quality.

ReMusic is undercurrent, because creating a hi-fi site now requires courage or, rather, a certain unconsciousness mixed with defiance of danger. Without mentioning the worst worldwide economic crisis since 1929, the most agée between us will remember that from the beginning of the 90’s, the end of the hi-fi, the end of the sector and other thousands of epitaphs that make us touching wood, were talking points.

For us, however, it is not a matter of labels. How you can see from our magazine subhead - the brief text that appears above our trademark - we intend to deal with hi-fi, high-end and high-tech. Therefore, with all those devices or technologies that are useful to reproduce at best the music in our domestic environment. In future, the products will change for sure, maybe they will call themselves high-whateverelse, but we will always speak of them.

 

 

Il premio Nobel

But are new awards necessary? Yes, they are. Our sector, like the others, gives many awards. But it is how they have been thought and assigned that makes the difference. The idea is not original, the intention is. We hope that all the aficionados whom we are giving our attentions and our demanding work to (not only in our free time) can recognize themselves in our effort and keep their enthusiasm, like us, who are still capable of getting involved by a machine that can reproduce music better than any other else. More than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

 

Out of phase, undercurrent, against all and everybody. Because, until the music exists, there will be always someone eager to listen to it at best.

 

 

*Like the image immortalized by Michelangelo in the Creation of Adam: one of the most famous and reinterpreted artistic images in the world. You can see here a brief but witty gallery.

 

P.S. What have to do with us the Nobel Prize and the Academy Award? Well, paraphrasing Woody Allen when he was scold for comparing himself to God, “to get inspired we too have to model ourselves on someone else, haven’t we?".

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