Season’s greetings to my legendary customers, subscribers, friends and family!

Can you believe it’s Christmas again? I don’t know where the time goes but welcome again to my end-of-year 2024 recap. A massive thank you to all who’ve helped make 2024 another fantastic year and my busiest yet. Here’s hoping the holiday season is happy and healthy for all.

As usual, Liquid Audio will close for Christmas and reopen in January. If you have enquiries, best leave them until after I reopen.

Liquid Audio is closed from 21 December 2023 to 14 January 2025.

Stats

I’m definitely at capacity in terms of customer work and keeping this website interesting and up-to-date for everyone. I think most realise that, with my ‘fully booked’ sign visible for most of 2024. Liquidaudio.com.au saw huge site traffic as usual, with nearly 400K views in 2024. Things have finally started levelling out in 2024 though, some 14 years after creating the website!

Views are slightly up in 2024, with around 380,000 views from 192,000 visitors as of 31 December. This equates to around 2% growth over 2023, a small but handy increase. Levelling out after such a long period of constant growth is to be expected. Even if numbers decline, as long as people visit, enjoy themselves, and hopefully learn something, I’m happy.

We saw significant gains in engagement over previous years, with the number of article likes (43, up from 14), comments (392, up from 268) and subscribers (up to nearly 2,000 now) significantly increasing. Thank you to all who’ve commented, liked and subscribed, I truly appreciate it!

January 2024 was my biggest month ever with 42,725 views, a crazy number. My YouTube channel is still growing slowly, with my ‘viral’ video about a shonky Australian battery manufacturer going slightly nuts with around 30,000 views and hundreds of comments in 2024.

The most popular articles and pages on my site include those on the Quad 405, Marantz Model 6300, Mission Cyrus One, Yamaha NS-1000, Technics Sl-120 and Sansui AU-919, Kenwood KD-500/550, plus the Hall of Shame of course. In graphical form, the top 10 in views for 2024 looked like this:

Views by country were similar to previous years and looked like this:

Thank you to all my viewers, especially those in non-native English-speaking countries. Wow!

Wins

Perhaps the most notable change in 2024 in terms of the site itself is that I wrote 27 articles this year and a total of just over 50,000 words. This is compared to just 8 articles in 2023, a 3x improvement. I was delighted with that, especially considering I was even busier this year. I aim to continue that in 2025, no promises in terms of numbers but I want to keep writing and there is no shortage of content!

I also significantly expanded existing FAQs, some of which have become my most popular content. My FAQs on old vs. new CD players and playing CDs in BluRay players, for example, have gone crazy in the last couple of years, so much so that I think I need to convert them into regular articles.

I made significant hosting and website changes in 2024, as usual, aimed at improving the visitor experience. For those interested, I boosted my hosting plan, changed my CDN and changed my host server datacentre location, along with a host of other backend tweaks and changes I love making. Site speeds are now in the top percentile or two of sites in the entire world according to speed testing, a very impressive result.

I also made some workshop changes, adding additional shelving, tidying up and reorganising, and I’ll make a few more during my summer shutdown.

Most enjoyable for me of course was the wonder range of customer equipment I got to work on in 2024, a wide range of amplifiers, preamplifiers, cassette decks, CD players, and turntables, with the focus on amps and turntables, Accuphase, Krell, Luxman, Sansui and a few others.

Also enjoyable is the continuing evolution of my hi-fi system. I’ve not yet gotten my L-07DII back on the bench, though I did work on/repair two other Kenwood L-07Ds this year. I’ve evolved my system with four pieces of Accuphase electronics and a new pair of B&W 803 Nautilus, complementing my NS-1000s. I’ve also added a stunning Fidelity Research FR-64S tonearm to my recently serviced Luxman PD-350, some new soft furnishings, etc.

Acquiring my Accuphase A-75 class A power amplifier was another highlight of 2024, as was commissioning two other beautiful Accuphase class A power amplifiers, an A-60 and an A-65 for one of my most ‘hi-fi addicted’ customers.

Challenges

Managing my time, energy and demand for bookings continues to be the biggest challenge. Being stricter in terms of how many bookings I accept, and filtering those with a tendency to be draining has helped. Getting to people before they find someone else to help them is always a juggle.

Unfortunately, a small number of people are selfish/unwilling/unable to consider others/boundaries/processes, often alienating everyone who can help them before realising too late what the common denominator is. I try to minimise interactions with these folks as it quickly becomes tedious dealing with them.

I’ve also had a couple of non-payers this year, most notably, the customer with the Mitsubishi DA-A10 and DA-P10 pre and power amplifiers I wrote about in November. The good news is that this gentleman is now a non-non-payer because he has finally collected and paid for these beauties! This is a great result and I’m sure he is enjoying them. I now have just one outstanding invoice from 2024 (and another from 2023). Thanks to all who pay their bills on time.

Space is a constant challenge in terms of how much customer equipment can be with me at any one time. Prompt collection is very important and this is why I have to severely limit interstate jobs for example. Larger boxed pieces like the Luxman M-6000 awaiting me take up significant space. I love working on pieces like this of course and that Luxman M-6000 is one of my next projects.

Giga-Thanks!

Thanks as always to the great Perth retailers and staff who support my work by referring customers and collaborating, especially Dan at Addicted To Audio, Pierre & Jim at the now sadly gone Revolution Turntable and Simon, Tony and Mark at Douglas Hifi.

Thanks also to my legendary colleagues and ‘repair bros’ Jason @ The Speaker Doctor and John @ JW Electronics. These gentlemen care about the details too, so please support all of us. A special thanks to Jason for his support over the years, it’s immensely appreciated.

I’d like to acknowledge those who’ve donated equipment to Liquid Audio. We resurrect vintage hi-fi gear so that others might have an opportunity to enjoy it after a little TLC. Many thanks for supporting this endeavour and thank you to those who’ve purchased equipment we’ve saved.

Lastly, and most importantly I’d like to acknowledge my customers, website visitors, advice seekers, subscribers and all who’ve supported me and my little mission to preserve and rejuvenate great hi-fi gear and educate people about it. Without all of you, my small business would not be possible.

To all who entrusted Liquid Audio with equipment inspection/service/repair/overhaul, purchased equipment, engaged me for advice, made a monthly donation, bought me beers, wine, CDs, records and tasty biscuits and to everyone who simply made the effort to say thanks for my efforts, a 1.21 ‘jigawatt’ THANK YOU for supporting Liquid Audio!

2024 Equipment Gallery

I know this is everyone’s favourite section but I’ve already spent several hours on this and it’s Xmas Eve, so I hope you don’t mind if I do something slightly different this year. For the first time, I’ve chosen one piece of equipment that I’ve particularly enjoyed working on each month.

The rules are 1) it must be customer equipment and 2) there can only be one piece of equipment per month. This is difficult because I’ve worked on many incredible pieces in many single-month periods, but let’s try this and let me know in the comments what you think.

Reducing the scale of this section helps me at this busy time, plus, it’s Christmas and a lot of folks never read these recaps anyway, so again, energy, time etc… Let’s go!

Merry Christmas!

As always, thank you for visiting and taking the time to peruse my little hi-fi repair blog from Perth, Western Australia. If you are still waiting for a job to be completed, rest assured, I’ll finish it soon, with love.

Don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement. Likewise, get in touch after we re-open if you’d like me to look at any of your hi-fi stereo equipment.

Here’s to a great 2025! Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a relaxing holiday, you LEGENDS!