USB DONE RIGHT: Two magic boxes that let computer audio ...

On this, our 30th anniversary,
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Features
Audio Then and Now
it’s interesting to look back
at the articles of our very
first issue. But it’s even more
instructive to look at the ads. Start with
the rear cover.
Can you imagine a cassette ad in
a magazine today? Okay, cassettes are
history, but how about an ad for blank
CD’s or DVD’s? No?
How about this one?
Strange, that doesn’t look like Rega’s
logo! And did Rega actually make speakers
in 1982? In fact no. The now-forgotten
Edon company was then the Rega
importer, but had a hankering to build
speakers. It asked Rega if it would mind
if it borrowed the famous name. The
speakers were in fact reasonably good,
and were later sold as Rega Camber, and
then just as Camber. They later morphed
24 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
into a maker of equipment and speaker
stands. Incidentally, Edon refused to pay
for that first ad, whose cut line, below
the logo, read, “setting new standards
in performance quality no value.”
Although 1982 is usually given as
the year Sony and Philips launched the
Compact Disc, when we began no one
had ever seen one, and so, inevitably,
there were ads for turntables. Systemdek
was represented, and that was hardly
surprising, since the Systemdek was then
an audiophile favorite. But this ad for a
Technics with a plug-in cartridge might
come as a bit of a surprise.
We don’t know what Panasonic was
thinking of with this ad. It did make
some tables that were then highly
praised, such as the SP-10, but the
SL-DL5 came from a different galaxy.
It featured direct drive, like most other
mass market turntables, but it also had
a flimsy and downright dodgy straightline
tracking arm, and a P-mount
plug-in phono cartridge whose rigidity
depended entirely on the friction of the
mount on the cartridge pins.
That was our first Quad ad, placed
by the brand’s then-new distributor,
May Audio. It would become our most
faithful advertiser. It and its successor
companies have advertised in every
issue of the magazine, with only a
single exception. May Audio became
our first product source when we set up
our Audiophile Store in 1988. Although
the store sources products from 18
companies today, May and its successor,
Liberty Trading, remain major sources.
Other major ads in that first issue
included Teac (with a cassette deck),
Harman/Kardon, B&W, and — of
yes — Classé, whose wondrous DR-2
pure class A amplifier was then justly
famous.
And Mitsubishi. With a color double
spread advertising…a receiver!