Tenth Anniversary of Cheaptubeaudio Blog

Cheaptubeaudio Blog: 10th Anniversary

The first article in this Blog was published on July 23, 2008, and so it has been TEN YEARS! How about That!

It has been ten long years. Time waits for no one, and there is sea change in my life. Due to family circumstances, I am due to move back to the US. There are many people and things in HK that I shall miss; equally, there are even more that I shall not at all, but perhaps that is for another article (if I do write it, it shall be smoky, I promise).

Some Rough Statistics
In the right hand bar you can see some statistics. There have been over 800,000 "unique" visitors from 194 countries.

The Blog's private stats are visible only to me, and it tells me there have been more than 1.6 million page views since inception.

Readers are primarily from the West, no surprise. Blogspot is blocked in China, so I have no readers there.

Looking Forward
The Blog shall soon see many more articles from NYC, which shall not any more bear the title of "Letter from NYC". I think there may be an increase in production, as I have more gears in active use in NYC, and have friends with interesting agendas.

In HK, a lot of my stuff now are dormant. However, recently there have been a lot of Western Electric related activity, which I shall sorely miss when I move back. In NYC, I am the only one I know (yet) who uses WE.

Thanks are due to:

• READERS Thank you for your feedback and many words of encouragement. I appreciate your support!

• FRIENDS Unlike my friend icefox, I do not socialize much these days. So, except for Saturday yumcha, I actually don't get to meet many friends for the last few years, which is regrettable. Particular thanks to: our yumcha friends for their friendship and help on many occasions; icefox, through his "devious" ways, for always prompting me to resurrect my "more worthwhile" gears (such as my WE, Brook etc), for engaging me more in the WE universe and, last but not the least, for the many late night chats that provide more juicy news than a tabloid; WSS, for being a true music lover, peacemaker, and for providing a shelter for Happy Hour; Pro Sound (the shop is messy, but the people are friendly); "Shidi" Andrew for his friendship and generosity; Seng/Carmen, for the breakfast sessions. I am sure I have forgotten to mention quite a few people, but I have to go to yumcha now. 

• ENEMIES Over the last two decades, I have made many friends, but also a few enemies.Truth is, there is not that much that is worthwhile out there, and as I grow older I am increasingly impatient with bad sound or people who pay more attention to their gears than music (and that is the majority of audiophiles and hifi writers). Being a writer and blogger does not help, as my strong views often generate bad vibes. Just to mention some, my disdain for German gears, "vintage sound" people, tweekers, tube rollers etc irks those communities. My general contempt for the "elder statesmen" of the HK audio scene also grates on their nerves. But here I have to thank my enemies, for their sheer incompetence has actually been entertaining and nourishing. This Blog would not even have come into existence were it not for some enemies! As I write I think of the way Strauss tone paints (especially his enemies) in Ein Heldenleben, which basically describes doctorjohn in the HK audio scene ! :-) The pictured recording is spectacularly played by the VPO.

Postscript: The Origin of Cheaptubeaudio
Many of my acquaintances, not to mention readers of this Blog (even regular ones), may not know that the name Cheaptubeaudio was a spin-off from a Yahoo Group, (doctorjohn_cheaptubeaudio) founded in 2001, which effectively ceased its active life a few years later due to the obsolescence of the format and my other activities, but I have kept the site open even now, if only for archival purposes. There were a lot of good stuff from various contributors buried there and it has always been my wish to collate and transfer the data to this Blog, but that would take time. This Yahoo group was founded when I split from another tube-related group that I was frustrated with, as that was populated by people not well acquainted with music and harbor values that are not at all musically nor high-fidelity related and in conflict with mine.

Before that, I was a frequent contributor to usenet and the HK forum Audioboard, where I met a lot of my old friends. That was also when I coined my moniker Doctorjohn. TKL, if you ever read this, Salut to you for contributing to the HK Hifi Scene!

After the Yahoo group's peak, like so many others, including our old Audioboard members, I participated heavily in the then-popular HK forum Review33. As with many less well managed forums, the site lacked good management, like moderation by senior members (especially after it was sold to a magazine, who did not know who's who) and was thus plagued by flame wars. Being a veteran of this kind of thing, it did not unduly bother me until something truly unique and distasteful happened.

At that time, there was a thread, one of hundreds, that was a bit more stylish than the others (even if it had a rather pretentious title), and it attracted some attention, including mine, and I was a regular contributor (in time perhaps not to the liking of some). Mind you, Review33 is a HK site and by far not everyone is fluent in English, though many post in English, even Chinglish (nothing wrong with that). This thread then attracted some attention from those better versed (in English). The problem was, it had an haute attitude, and was more of an insiders' game.

In 2008, a freak and unfortunate incidence involving an "intruder" provoked a huge incidence within the thread and incited a huge flame war, including much vitriol and personal vendetta against me. When the administration did not entirely side with the thread, the person who started the thread did something unique in my internet experience. With cunning and stealthy planning, many regular contributors were recruited and all of a sudden they all left Review33 and started another site that looks exactly the same as Review33. That in my opinion was not a good thing. Use your own creativity, sever cleanly with the past and why compare? For the moment that was perhaps sweet revenge but history proves otherwise. The imitator site (which had forgotten its origin in Review33) did not blow away Review33, instead remains an insider's game and has very low traffic. Together with other splinter groups of equally dubious sincerity that left in less dramatic fashion, these "rebels" did harm to the audio community by fragmentation (HK is small) but failed in their collective vanity of hoping to bolster themselves as they have not attracted the community at large. One heavily trafficked site, even if argumentative, is better than tens of much less trafficked sites. It should be said too that the emergence of Facebook and What's App also have been important factors in the general decline of forums.

It was then, after all this, that I started to think about my own site. After all, it is good to archive and not have to repeat the same things over and over. So I started this Blog, and I am glad to report that traffic here is a lot more than some of those sites. Eat your heart out!