Land of the giants

摘要

In the February issue of HFN, Andrew Everard's review of the Chord TToby amplifier was striking on a number of counts. Not only did he find the 'petite powerhouse' a well designed and good-sounding piece, he also mentioned that its diminutive size makes it 'very on trend with the growing popularity of desktop audio'. Small is beautiful, as economist E F Schumacher put it. It wasn't always so. From the mid-'70s through the '80s, the opposite attitude ruled the hi-fi world. Bigger was better. Electronics makers vied with each other to bring to market the largest, most unwieldy components they could possibly produce. This was especially true of the Japanese brands, although Tandberg and other European companies also bought into the trend.