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A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit three more HIFI audio manufacturers. This time, they were located in the UK. The opportunity of combining music, gear, and fish & chips, all in one go, was almost impossible to pass up!

As always with these trips, I was curious to learn more about what made each of these three companies so special.

Discovering new or unfamiliar HIFI gear is always interesting because, to me, it’s not simply about devices that are part of a playback chain. Each product is a combination of so many different elements that went into its creation. From an overarching philosophy, to various technical and aesthetic choices, to performance metrics, each component is a reflection of where it is from and the people who produced it. That background, that story, is an integral and often overlooked aspect of this pastime we all enjoy.

Having previously visited various HIFI companies in Italy and Japan, I experienced firsthand the technical and cultural differences, and in some cases similarities, that made these select brands so special. So, I was intrigued by what a similar “field trip” to the UK might uncover.

And unlike the Japanese companies I visited last year (each of which was owned by or was part of a larger corporation), these three British companies were, to varying degrees, family operations.

The companies I was visiting on this little jaunt across the pond were MJ Acoustics, PMC, and AVID HIFI.

My first stop? MJ Acoustics, a company that has been making its own custom subwoofer systems, right here in the UK, for the last 25 years. I hope you enjoy this little video of my visit, and a special thanks to Playback Distribution for helping facilitate the tour.

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A native of Toronto Canada, Carlo's interest in audio began at a young age when, unbeknownst to his mother, he started taking apart her numerous transistor radios to see how they worked. This desire for “knowledge through deconstruction” continued through to the family’s 8-track tape player, turntable, headphones, and speakers. Carlo subsequently spent a lot of time in his room. Toronto was a fertile ground for Hi-Fi in the 1970s and 80s and Carlo spent much of his wayward youth hanging out in downtown Toronto stereo shops, listening to all manner of gear and picking the brains of the various store owners. Through that formative experience, Carlo developed an appreciation for good music and good sound reproduction. Also, as a budding graphic artist, the aesthetic aspects of a given piece of gear became increasingly of interest to his eyes. It was at about that time as well that Carlo began purchasing “Audio Magazine” on a regular basis and came to appreciate, in particular, the writing and reviewing of the late Leonard Feldman. Later on, he was also influenced by the writing and observations of the staff at Sound and Vision Canada, helmed at the time by Alan Loft. Carlo graduated from Sheridan College with a degree in Classical Animation and was subsequently employed by Walt Disney Consumer Products for 10 years as a Character Artist and Art Director. Having become disenchanted with Los Angeles, he then decided to strike out on his own. Carlo started his own company and has been freelancing artwork, from his home studio, primarily for the toy and publishing industries since 2001. In 2013, on a bit of a lark, Carlo answered a “Call for Writers” ad from an AV website that he had been regularly reading for about 5 years called Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. He had come to appreciate the website’s combination of subjective impressions along with the objective bench-testing available in several of the reviews. The “B-Team” must have been working that day because by some miracle he was hired as a writer and his first review for the site was published early in 2014. Carlo has been continually writing, editing, traveling, listening, and learning on the company’s behalf ever since. Carlo currently lives in Granville, Ohio with his wife, two sons, and a very old, but chill dachshund.

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