We look back at 2025. For Alpha Audio a somewhat quieter year, but not for your editors. This is Martijn’s retrospective.
The lack of livestreams
In a sea of hardly informative YouTube Audiofluencers, uncritically promoting the same thing and uttering the same words, we did things differently. I miss our livestreams, but apparently it is not valuable enough in the end. We cannot manage the needed finances with support from our viewers.
Old vinyl
Analogue recorded, mixed and mastered records turn out to sound masterfully good after a clean-up, even on modestly priced players with attractively priced elements. High-quality music experience for a relative bargain, but unfortunately, second-hand prices of original pressings have shot up like a rocket.
AlphaVisit – our readers’ home installation
A series introduced this year by Arno Floore that gets a lot of appreciation from our readers. Not available in English yet, but that might change.
Volumio Rivo+ with Lineo5
Volumio thunders the ball far out of the stadium with the combination of the Rivo+ and the Lineo5 linear power supply. You have to spend a lot (and I mean a lot) more money to improve on this combination. High-End results for a Mid Price investment. Forza Volumio!
Kora TB200 amplifier
Without a doubt my highlight of the year, my new reference amp, the Kora TB200. Why? “Let the music play”:
Livestreams is one the things that made you so different from the rest of the audio world. I miss them very much and please do all you can to do more this year.
Hi Robert. It is not so much we can do as what our readers can do. If everyone would support us with Patreon, we could restart doing the livestreams. It is simply a finance issue.
It takes a lot of time to prepare these livestreams and in the end, the costs involved are not covered.
I agree 100% Only you Alpha Audio were making these. I understand they don’t bring enough money now but they may in the future. Doing something that unique will eventually pay off. I have been an Alpha Patreon for many months but that doesn’t suffice to bring money. Patreon is a + I think..
The livestreams not valuable enough noo… I miss them a lot, you were the only ones to do that and it was always so interesting. I watched some of them multiple times..
If everyone who values these livestreams would join Patreon, we might be able to cover the costs involved. Right now, it simply doesn’t add up. And we’re not talking about financial gain, but simply covering the costs.
I didn’t know there was such thing as AlphaVisit, I’m always curious about other peoples systems/listening areas as an educational purpose.
Hi William, we recently started this series, conceived by a reader who reached out to Alpha-Audio. You can find it in the Dutch section of the website; we first thought it would be of interest to our Dutch audience but as we speak, we are in the process of translating the visits!
They are very informative! I was so inspired by the latest one with the swapping of the opamps, that I just ordered a pair of Sparkos ss3602 discrete opamps as well.
Will check it out. Cheers.