What and Why: The What

Below is my purpose statement for the Wall of Sound website.  -Noam

We care about music. Every kind of music. We want the efforts of musicians to be heard, and recognized. In every way possible. We support local artists and venues. We’ll review, not criticize. No name dropping, no lists. No pretending to be arbiters of good taste.

We care about good sound. Some of our authors are “gear heads”, some aren’t.  Our mission isn’t to count the angels dancing on the head of a pin, or to “compare cables”. But we’ll endeavour to inform our readers about the quality of both recordings and playback equipment.

We care about Stereo. Two-channel recording has been one of the only constants of the last sixty years in music. There’s a huge wealth of Stereo recordings, and we’re focused on these. Of course, we love Mono as well. We aren’t yet as persuaded by other formats.

We like affordable gear. From every corner of the globe. We’ve found that, by and large, equipment designed with well-chosen compromises are what’s best suited for most domestic environments. We enjoy gear that lets us enjoy music, rather than making us agonize over its’ flaws. Even if it doesn’t impress anyone else. We tend to steer clear of the megabuck, egomaniacal offerings.

We like DIY. Most of our team like to sling solder and saw wood. It’s fun. And we’ll share our adventures here, whether it’s a set of cables we made or a pair of dream speakers.

We care about brick and mortar. In spite of the trend to internet everything, we know that physical retailers have a big part to play in the success (and survival) of our hobby. We want to support their efforts.

We respect the efforts of yesteryear. Before this age of instant obsolesence, most of what we take for granted today was established through good standards and solid engineering practices. We’ll celebrate those champions, and their accomplishments, in our pages.

We care about journalistic standards. That includes fact-checking, good layout, grammar, spelling…as well as integrity in our opinions. Conflicts of interest will be vetted and removed. We’ll do our best to be a reliable source for our readers.

We’re Canadians. Or at least, our site is Canada-based. We won’t make a big deal out of it, but some of our perspectives may at times be a bit outside the mainstream. Our humour as well. Generally, we’re diverse, liberal and open-minded. And yes, we’ll try to spotlight our local scene, as appropriate.

…..

Many of you will have read the above, and instinctively “get it”. Nothing new is being invented here (in fact, much of our inspiration comes from former periodicals like Listener, and No Depression). For those who may want to better understand the reasons behind what we believe and value, you can continue on to the “Why” part.