Tables may turn for home audio
A DUNEDIN turntable maker should have been on his way back from showing off his device at a major US audio show last weekend.
Instead, Simon Brown has been stuck at home due to the Covid19 pandemic.
He has been using the silence of lockdown to finetune his record player with the help of a quiet city.
‘‘I had one thing that wasn’t quite so satisfactory about it . . . the noise was much more loud than I wanted.
‘‘It was actually really hard to measure, but because the noise in the city now is lower it was easier to measure, to actually refine that.’’
The Dunedin product designer was set to be part of a demonstration room at AXPONA, the biggest hifi show in North America that was meant to be held in Chicago last weekend.
Mr Brown was also going to give a public talk there about vinyl and how design considerations affect it.
Instead, he would present webinars from his home.
‘‘I am passionate about the issues of designing for the effects of sound vibration when what you are dealing with is very, very small, at the submicroscopic level,’’ Mr Brown said.
In 2011, he launched ‘‘The Wand’’ unipivot tonearm and had since built a record player to go with it.
He said he was cognisant of the difficulty industries such as tourism and hospitality faced due to the outbreak, but businesses like his — making items people could enjoy at home — could be set to benefit.
‘‘Those of us who make stayathome stuff . . . may actually do well out of it.’’
Mr Brown sells ‘‘The Wand’’ via his website and through distributors around the world.