From Mithat's Desk

If you peruse the things that Frank Van Alstine said in the previous century, one of the gems you might find is his view that audio gear shouldn't re-interpret an artist's intent. Rather, it should function as a perfect copy machine. Others have referred to this philosophy as "straight wire with gain."

I believe Frank needed to emphasize this at the time largely because of the increasing fashionability of single-ended class A tube power amps -- which as a rule came with with low linearity and high output impedance. The occasionally pleasant effect this combination can create became a marketing lever for many manufacturers. "Warm. Rich." Buzzwords for a loose low end and signal masking. What they never said was, "Not as the artist intended." Nor, "Works great for some stuff, not so much on others."

TL;DR: It's not important.

For many people, summer is a time to relax and take it easy. Not so for us! A lot has been happening here. Most notably, for only the second time in its existence, AVA has moved. It's only a couple miles, but as anyone who has moved house knows, distance barely figures into how much work it is.

We're really looking forward to serving everyone better than ever before once we're done setting up the new space. But we're still working out the kinks. (Thank-you internet service provider for having so much difficulty moving our phone number to the new location.) Your patience is eternally appreciated while we finish things up -- and especially until we have phone service that doesn't divert everyone into voice mail.

In other news, we've been busy with exciting new R&D projects and will report anything solid as soon as it's solid. It's taken forever, but things have finally gotten back to normal with most suppliers since the COVID-19 Great Parts Apocalypse™. It's a tremendous relief that we can finally think about new products again.

And of course we've been crazy busy building you the great gear that you love. We're all looking forward to doing much more of that!