Season’s greetings to all, join me for another annual recap, shall you?!

Welcome to my 2025 recap. Yes, it’s that time of year again, no, I can’t believe it, and you’d better believe that Liquid Audio will close for a much-needed break over the festive season! If you have enquiries, best to leave them until we reopen.

Liquid Audio will be closed from 20 December 2025 to 13 January 2026.

Statistics

As I’ve been predicting would have to happen, stats have finally plateaued out, for now at least, after 15 years. 15 damn years! It’s inevitable when you think about it: It’s not possible to continue to grow forever, in a finite space, with finite readers and new businesses popping up all the time. I’m just amazed that numbers have grown so strongly for so long.

We still have amazing stats, with over 350,000 views from nearly 180,000 visitors in 2025. Plenty of larger businesses would be happy with numbers like these, and I still handle all the backend, content, design and technical work. My prediction is that stats will flatten out, maybe even dropping a little further, stabilising within a few tens of thousands of views. Let’s see.

We are down around 7% in views and visitors from last year. Content likes, however, are up by 86%, and subscribers continue to increase, which is great. Honestly, I’ll be happy wherever the numbers settle. I never imagined we’d even get to 100K views a year.

UPDATE: By year’s end, we’d hit 363.3K views, down just 5% on last year.

The top-10 most popular articles and FAQs include my Quad 405 review, old vs new CD player FAQ, Sansui AU-101 article, Yamaha NS-1000 article, playing CDs in your BluRay player FAQ, Sansui AU-919 deep dive, Marantz 6300 turntable review, Sansui AU-20000 repair article, AU-317 repair and mini-rant, and Cyrus One amplifier review, in that order. I’ve excluded pages from that top 10, but our contact, home and store pages fall into the top ten in terms of views.

Top 10 Views by country (after Australia) look like this:

Thanks again to my international viewers, especially those in non-native English-speaking countries. I did have a translation plugin working this year, but pulled it as it chewed too many PHP resources and slowed down my site. Readers should, instead, use the translate function in most browsers. This only slows the individual browser rather than my entire site.

Changes

As usual, I made numerous website design and content changes for 2025, including new pages and FAQs. I introduced my new On-The-Bench page, showing equipment as I work on it to help keep customers up to date. I also introduced my News page, with news related to me and my system, a Sitemap for people who want to see everything in one place and a Support Us page, which encourages visitors to – you guessed it – support me and my work!

I added 20 new FAQs, such as What Cartridges Have You Owned?, What Amplifiers Have You Owned? and many more. I plan to add more equipment ownership questions and others about the sillier side of hi-fi equipment, bad design decisions, etc. I also added a new recent supporters list, in the sidebar/footer, listing the kind folks who have supported Liquid Audio with a donation. Thanks to all who made donations this year, and previously!

YouTube

My YouTube channel is still slowly growing, and I’m finally approaching 10,000 subscribers! I’ve largely ignored video content creation due to my workload, but I do upload a handful of videos a year. If you haven’t already, head over there, watch a few, and subscribe. I released a couple of videos recently that have done really well, the Technics SE-A100 video in particular garnering over 36,000 views in just a few weeks, which is insane for my channel.

Of around 130 videos, almost all have a 95% or greater positive ratio, too, with most sitting at around 98%, which is an extraordinary result for YouTube. Ratios this positive are nearly impossible to achieve, especially with a channel like mine, because I’m often talking about equipment damage and failed previous repair attempts, which triggers some. Certain videos see a fair bit of ‘coping’ in the comments from those responsible and their friends, and yet we still see some of the most positive ratios achievable, thanks to an amazing and intelligent community!

Wins

We had several notable wins in 2025. Once again, I wrote more than in previous years, with my largest annual total yet – 62,000 words written across 68 separate items, a substantial novel-sized effort. I know this because my sister is a published author, and I verified those numbers with her! I’m not aware of other businesses contributing like this, but either way, it’s a significant improvement over last year.

More wins came in the form of the amazing customers and equipment I’ve worked with in 2025. I work with a lot of returning customers, but new ones appear all the time, and I got to work with some great new people and their equipment this year.

In terms of equipment, given how much turntable work I do, I decided to write a few more turntable articles. This went down well, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The other focus for me these days is Accuphase equipment, something that has grown steadily since my earliest days owning and repairing Accuphase equipment.

It’s fair to say that Liquid Audio is an independent Accuphase specialist now, and a lot of Accuphase equipment comes through the workshop, perhaps more than any other independent in Australia, befitting of the level of care it receives. I see everything from the P series amps to the A series premier models, preamps, SACD players, tuners, you name it. You’ll see what I mean in the gallery, below, and last year’s. I own a full set of Accuphase equipment, too, of course, something you’d expect of someone passionate about the brand.

I added three of my grail shortwave receivers to my radio collection in 2025, including a stunning and immaculate JRC NRD-515 that I’ve yet to write about, plus a JRC NRD-525 and a Kenwood R-5000. I also added a new (for me) Subaru Outback 3.6R, which I absolutely love! Tony (Douglas Hi-Fi) – I did pull those sparkplugs, and no, I did not have to raise or lower the engine to do so!!

I also overhauled my B&W Nautilus 803 speakers this year with Jason (the Speaker Doctor), replacing the perished surrounds on the woofers. I also added new and much improved feet, waxed everything, and that’s covered over on my news page. I also purchased a new and NOS arm base for my FR-64S and Luxman PD-350 turntable.

No non-payers this year either! I only have one long-term outstanding invoice now.

Challenges

An ongoing challenge is time and energy management, along with managing the demand for bookings. My booking status table helps, and I’ve added a how-to-book section to address common booking questions. A waitlist with many dozens of people on it is not sensible for my business, given the consistent volume of enquiries. My apologies to anyone who’s missed out on a booking, and to those whose equipment I’ve yet to look at/finish.

Another challenge is equipment turnover/volume vs quality, care and attention to detail. Maintaining a high enough volume of smaller jobs, vs completing the larger, more technically challenging jobs and all the content we’re known for, is a juggle. To elaborate, as it might help folks better understand: the way I work, the type of jobs I take on and content creation mean I earn much less than I could if I were just slapping out the safe ‘quick-and-easys’ many others do. People expect the articles and high quality of work, yet, by its nature, it reduces turnover.

Content/knowledge/style theft, for want of a better term, remains somewhat of a problem. I’ve also had to pay further attention to the impact of time and energy wasters, intentional or otherwise, something many will understand. I put so much time and effort into my work and this website that dealing with such people becomes beyond tedious and simply not something I can entertain. Long-term relationships with appreciative, loyal customers are the only ones I’m interested in cultivating.

The dreaded ‘fatigue’ has played a part in my productivity again this year, but this is an ongoing issue for now that I manage the best I can. Other than that, we are winning. If time management and a handful of people are the only things we have to worry about with an international audience of nearly 200,000 people a year, we’re doing pretty well, I think!

Thank Yous

Thanks as always to the Perth retailers and staff who support me, refer customers and collaborate. Genuine collaboration and support are invaluable, and a special thanks to my colleagues and friends, Jason @ The Speaker Doctor and John @ JW Electronics, who have each helped out with various things throughout the year. Jason, in particular, is always incredibly helpful, so please support his business, also.

I’d like to acknowledge those who’ve donated equipment in 2025. We resurrect vintage hi-fi gear so that others might have an opportunity to enjoy it. Many thanks to the various generous donors in 2025 who’ve supported this endeavour, and to those who’ve purchased equipment I’ve saved. There’s not a lot of margin in most of this work, and plenty of opportunities for me to lose money on equipment that doesn’t sell or finds a painful customer, as happened this year, but I’m still happy to do it.

Lastly, and most importantly, I’d like to acknowledge and thank my customers, website visitors, advice seekers, donors, subscribers and all who engage my services and support me and what I do. To all who entrusted Liquid Audio with hi-fi equipment, purchased equipment, engaged me for advice, made a donation, bought me a gift, liked and shared content, watched a video, subscribed or left a review, and to everyone who simply made the effort to say thanks for something: THANK YOU for supporting Liquid Audio!

2025 Equipment Gallery

OK, enough with the pleasantries, welcome once again to the annual equipment gallery. Again, as per 2024, the rules are 1) only one piece of equipment per month, and 2) it must be customer equipment. Let’s go!

Honourable mentions that missed a spot include a lot of Perreaux equipment, including a PMF-5150, PMF-5550, various SM-2 and SM-3 preamps, PMF-1150, 1850, 2150, etc., power amplifiers, a few Thorens decks, including a couple of TD-160s and a ton of others I’ve forgotten. I’d love to triple the size of the gallery, but even this post is around 3,000 words and took me long enough to write, so to even get these posts out, I’ve had to pare them back.

My conclusions after looking back over the hundreds of pieces I worked on in 2025 are thus: Lots of Accuphase, amplifiers and turntables. This is not surprising to me, but seeing things again always clarifies my key focuses, and I like these. I have no reason to think 2026 will be any different, and I look forward to it.

Merry Christmas!

Once again, let me take this opportunity to thank you for visiting and supporting my business. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement or equipment you’d like to see, and feel free to get in touch after we reopen if you’d like me to look at any of your hi-fi stereo equipment.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a fantastic 2026!