THE SOUND+IMAGE ULTIMATE 30
We celebrate our 30th anniversary by diving into back issues and wallowing in nostalgia to present our pick of 30 ‘wow’ moments from the last three decades of audio & AV...
Time is a very misleading thing, George Harrison said. “We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one. It’s being here now that’s important.”
Quite right — and next issue we’ll be back to our usual ‘right-here right-now’ in-the-momentness. But for just one special Sound+Image Souvenir Issue, let’s do a little cupboard-diving into our backissue collection and see how the world of audio and AV looked in years gone by.
Why? Because Sound+Image magazine turns 30 this year; happy birthday to us! We’re young compared to some, of course — our sister magazine Australian Hi-Fi, for example, was rst distributed on strips of gum-bark up the Parramatta River in 1794. So we’re looking back only as far as 1987, avoiding too many shots of amusing haircuts and Miami Vice fashions in order to focus on those products and moments in hi- which impressed us, or which changed the world of home entertainment, or which we remember as being just darned good fun to have around.
A er far too mono much cogitation and discussion we made a list of 30 things, and have designated them as our ‘Ultimate 30’ — not quite one per year, as we’d have had to omit some double-blinders which happened to occur simultaneously, but there are roughly 10 choices for each decade of our existence.
ese are, important to note, nothing to do with our annual Sound+Image Awards — those will be along in two issues’ time. is is a more casual celebration: we’ve created a series of company histories which we hope you’ll enjoy, but rst we’ll announce our Ultimate 30 with all the pomp and glory they deserve. We held a small (let’s say ‘exclusive’) event at the Intercontinental Sydney to hand out the physical awards, but of course physical objects will fade away with time, while the fact reversedof their selection in the Sound+Image Ultimate 30 will surely endure as long as humankind walks the Earth. Meanwhile our great thanks to all those who assisted in making this issue possible.
“Yesterday is gone,” said Mother Teresa once, with undeniable accuracy. “Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” We couldn’t have put it better.