In the old days of analogue photography you could get a soft focus effect by smearing a small amount of vaseline on the lens of your camera. Put on a great blob of the stuff however, and the picture became unrecognisable. No matter how much you tried to focus, or how much better you made the resolution of the film, all you would do is make the picture look different, never better. You might like the colours in your photograph, but you could never get a good picture of the event you photographed.

Hi fi systems are the acoustic equivalents of the ‘vaselined’  lens, some of the very best systems have a light smearing, the worst are covered in layers of the stuff. The musical event is lost in the incoherence imposed by the system, and  in the worst cases, you are just left to choose the sonic equivalent of which colours you like best – a treble v midrange v bass debate, or which sounds nicer. At the level of a ‘which sound is best’  debate MusicWorks products will be a hit and miss affair – do you prefer the sound one way or another, or maybe there is no discernable difference at all.

On the most musically coherent systems, the MusicWorks approach can provide huge benefits. Music is organised energy, and the MusicWorks approach maximises the coherence of this energy, keeping the musical intent, subtlety and communication intact. When describing the MusicWorks effect people often say it is like getting closer to the performers. This is not that (necessarily) the music gets louder, but is more to do with the feeling you get when you hear more of the direct sound and less reflected, the music becoming more intimate and personal. The reflections (time / amplitude / frequency distortions) you hear further back in a concert hall are very similar to the halo of incoherence that occurs when hi fi systems introduce timing errors.

So, are MusicWorks products for you, and your system?

Well, if you have speakers from a manufacturer who considers phase coherence important, then you have a very good starting point. If you have fast, coherent speakers & electronics, with good intrinsic dynamic range, better still. With this sort of system, in combination with judicious use of MusicWorks products you can have a hi fi system capable of conveying a huge amount of musical subtlety, and communication across a wide range of musical genres.

The fast  ‘coherent’ hi fi alluded to above start at less than £2,000, so you do not need to look at spending megabucks on a high end system to get stunning musical results. If you do spend more on appropriate components however, the results are even more rewarding.

We are developing a new product designed to allow the curious to experience ‘MusicWorks Magic’ at a very affordable price. Based on the ReSponse Isolator, the new product will allow effective isolation of equipment that is currently set up on more conventional equipment tables, or is simply resting on the floor. The ReSponse Mini (name may change if we get more inspired) should retail at under £50, and we hope to unveil and demonstrate these isolators at Audio World ’11 this weekend.

If we can think of a suitable game or competition at the show, we may even give some away.

MusicWorks products will be on demonstration at the Audio World ’11 show 26th & 27th March at the Park Inn, Heathrow. We will be in Syndicate 16, as well as having products on show in Syndicate 15 courtesy of MIT Cables distributor, Audiobility.

For more information on the show, visit: http://www.chestergroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84&Itemid=215

Entry level MusicWorks products are designed to work very well in a wide range of systems. Our top products however are really most applicable when used with wide bandwidth components where phase coherence and fast transient handling are part of the design. This does mean that, depending on system components and set up, occasionally one of our more basic products may provide better value, and indeed performance, than a premium MusicWorks product.

As many of our dealers stock only entry level MusicWorks components it may be difficult to obtain a demonstration locally of other products. If this is the case, please do not hesitate to contact us if you feel you would like to hear a product that your local dealer does not stock.

There are two obvious ways to decide whether a Hi Fi component represents good value for money. Namely:

Does it do a better job than any competing product for the same amount?

Are they priced at a reasonable margin over their cost?

The answer to the first question, we believe is a definitive, yes. In fact we are happy to have our products compared with anything available from any other manufacturer at any price. We believe that our products have unique design principles which ensure, that in their field, and when comparisons are carried out using musical criteria, there is nothing available that performs as well.

Now, as any brand expert will tell you, the second question, for most premium products is irrelevant. Well we at MusicWorks do not believe that price premium is irrelevant. We want the maximum number of people to have access to our products, and feel that reasonableness in pricing is important. In this regard we are happy to have our products compared in terms of ‘value’ of components employed for a given price to any other Hi Fi product. Please, when making this comparison, bear in mind that all our products are manufactured and assembled in the UK. We believe that the small premium that this imposes on the end price of our products is easily justified on quality and support criteria, not to mention helping UK plc.

No amount of purple prose or technical information can tell you how a Hi Fi product is going to perform in your system. The only reason to buy a MusicWorks product (or any other piece of Hi Fi come to that) is because it makes a significant improvement to the performance of your music playing system. Because of this, we would strongly advise anyone considering the purchase of a MusicWorks product to get a demonstration. If you have difficulty in getting to hear of any of our products, please contact us and we will do our damndest to make sure you can evaluate it before buying.