Tír Na HiFi

I am happy to help too if I can.

Sorry to hear that I have got to meet and befriend a lot of people through this forum. I hope it is kept going in some form or other. But there is no doubt traffic through the site has diminished to a trickle. Happy to help also to try and keep it alive.

I joined this forum when I landed in Ireland (Dublin) from Italy in 2021 (pandemic was at its peak and I had to spend a quarantine period in a hotel). Being an audiophile I started looking for interesting places, either real or virtual, where I could continue to share and nurture my passion. And this forum was one of the first.
Although the activity was far from frenetic, I found here a number of precious suggestions and several kind and polite persons to discuss with.
I understand the reason, but it is a bit of pain to see this forum closing.
I don't use Facebook, but my wife does, so I may ask her help in case I will need to contact you again.

I would like to thank Fran for keeping Tirnahifi alive up to these days; I wish a new virtual HIFI living room will born from the ashes of this forum sooner or later.

Meanwhile, best of luck to everybody and enjoy the Music, whatever the format you use and the system you have.

Max

Many thanks Fran for all the effort and hard work over the years.
I'll miss the forums.

Mark.

Will be sad to see the place go but can understand the decision. I've met many great friends over the last 20 years be it here or the previous Cloney forums.
Huge thanks to Fran for keeping it going over the years.

I am in touch with Fran about moving forum to my server, but the question still remains; would you like to keep the forum, in what shape & form, or move somewhere else?

Please help us decide by filling this small survey:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/Response ... tTWDg5SC4u

Hope that together we can make this place alive, but if there's no interests lets see at least how to preserve many valuable discussion somewhere.

cheers, hudo

In my humble opinion the structure of the forum is fine (and improveable). Looking back there has been a lot of strong activity driven by Nigel, Fran and Pearse, and the regular users have progressed into listening to their equipment and are generally happy with what they are hearing. There are very few younger people coming into the forum with new ideas and strategies, and only younger leaders will convince them to join. I commend Hudo's suggestion to manage the forum and get it re-vitalized.

I am sad to the see the demise of this forum and yet I fully understand and appreciate the reasons why. I checked in here weekly and I was aghast at the lack of activity, i.e. posts, over a long period of years. High performance or specialist audio in Ireland is the outlier of outlier hobby interests. I have often wondered how Cloney Audio has been able to stay in business all these years in what is a minuscule market? Kudos to Noel and his staff for doing so too! I haven't bought anything from them in recent years largely due to the products I wanted having no representation here (Vitus Audio for one).

One of my longest and closest friends over the past 40+ years passed away in March 2022. As a budding young audiophile, I first met up with him in 1980 when I ran a then fledgling record cleaning service here in the South of the country. At that time and later, he had components from the likes of Audio Research Inc., Classé, Roxsan, Linn, Naim Audio, Pink Triangle, Pass Labs, Van den Hul, Nordost, Lyra, SME, Lavardin, Copland, Kharma, Transparent Audio, Acoustat, Tom Evans, Ayre Audio, Ansusz Acoustics, ProAc, VPI etc. in his system and regularly upgraded components. He was the first true and authentic audiophile that I happened across in Ireland. His knowledge of music was encyclopaedic and his record collection was a joy to go through. I am glad that his widow with whom I am good friends, now enjoys the system that her late husband lovingly and enthusiastically put together over many years.

I can't speak to the rest of the country but I suspect audiophiles of the stature of my late friend are all too few. There were a few serious audiophiles down here but they are/were from the older generation. I don't really think that the quality of today's popular music is enough to entice younger people into spending a lot of money on specialist audio components? Speaking personally, my buying of music on vinyl records seems steadfastly focussed on reissues with an occasional purchase of a brand new recording. That doesn't augur well for the future of the audio hobby. Younger people seem to be more interested in the latest Mobile Phones than in high quality music reproduction. Their loss.

Many years ago, sometime during the mid 1980s, I came into contact with an Asian man in the north of the country (not N.I.) who had secured the distribution rights for Simon Yorke turntables in Ireland. He told me of his astonishment at the apparent lack of interest in high end audio in this country. This would of course, be in stark contrast to Asia where the interest in high performance audio appears to be reasonably strong and healthy. Whenever I have seen SME at Munich High End in recent years, it is conspicuous to note that the people milling around the SME stand consist largely of Asian men in business suits. HiFi Concept, a Munich based audio dealer, told me in 2007 that nobody in Germany bought SME turntables because they are too expensive. Germany is well served with a healthy supply of domestic turntable manufacturers, in any event.

Anyway, thank you Fran for all of your efforts over the years in what was surely a labour of love in keeping the audio hobby at the forefront, if only to a limited audience of devotees and enthusiasts. I think it is a wonderful and worthwhile interest and has given me years of pleasure and contentment. It most certainly is, for me, one of the things that makes life worth living!

hudo wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:25 pm I am in touch with Fran about moving forum to my server, but the question still remains; would you like to keep the forum, in what shape & form, or move somewhere else?

Basically I'd like to keep it going, perhaps with some "improvements". I know this is sentimental or nostalgic and other forums on social media have taken over the "what are you listening to" type threads but the banter and advice support etc here has been invaluable.
There is a wealth of knowledge here and very little BS. The classifieds means we know the people buying and selling and very often we know the gear on offer.

I’ve clicked the

Upgrade forum to newer/better engine, to be more usable and modern

Option.

It’s sad but true that I miss the ability on here to like posts (and get likes). It does seem to have that addictive quality that facebook, twitter etc have recognised.

I truly think this will be a case of you don’t know what you have till it’s gone so if it can be saved I promise to post more!

.sjb