If you are a long time TNT-Audio reader perhaps you remember our early days back in 1995. Everything started as a personal "Italian" website then slowly evolved in an international one, with writers from almost any corner of the World. At the very beginning the website was updated every now and then, with no real periodicity to speak of.
After a couple of years we decided to update the website on a weekly basis and TNT-Audio became the magazine you're become familiar with.
Ten years after those early days we decided to transform this magazine into a "registered" weekly technical publication. What does this mean? Actually, nothing. More precisely, nothing really changes. Following the most recent (2001) Italian laws, an online "magazine" is - by all means - comparable to a "print" traditional one. For a printed mag one need to "register" the publication on a so-called "Press Roll" (Registro della Stampa) and its editor in chief should join a kind of "Journalists Professional Register" (Albo Professionale dei Giornalisti). And this is exactly what we decided to do: now yours truly belongs to a Special Directory associated to the aforementioned Albo Professionale dei Giornalisti, as editor in chief of a weekly technical magazine devoted to Music and HiFi components. The magazine itself has been registered officially (Reg. Nr. 5/05 12/2/2005) on the Italian "Press Roll".
All this bureacracy wasn't strictly necessary, actually, but we thought a sort of "official" vest could have been a nice gift for these first 10 years of TNT-Audio activity. It is well known that "press" rules and laws vary from one Country to another: indeed, we are pretty sure many online magazines out there have no "official" registration or enrollment.
Anyway, this won't change a single jota for us: TNT-Audio is and will ever be available on the Web only, will have no advertising and no subscriptions or forms of readers' support. We love our uncommon status: truly independent from the market (Companies, distributors etc.) and from readers. We just need to know nobody can ask us for something just because he bought a banner or donated a small amount of money to support us. We know this may sound arrogant (after all we're a dirty dozen) but we won't trade our "freedom of speech" for money.
We do this just for fun and we wish to feel free to write everything we want, the way we want, anytime we want.
We love to be free to let you know that a 20$ amplifier (the T-Amp) trashes many traditional - even expensive - amplifiers. We are well aware this will hurt many manufacturers but since they don't advertise here...[fill in the blanks]
Furthermore...how many mags (even oline ones!) publish DIY designs? Ever wondered why? DIY stuff may cause some serious damage to commercial interests! During these 10 years of activity we have published almost any kind of DIY design: speakers, cables, amplifiers, D/A converters, accessories etc. While this activity has been highly praised by the DIY crowd, HiFi Companies didn't like it much, to say the least :-)
At the end of these 10 years, we are proud to have been able to keep - against all odds - this mag free from commercial influences. It was and still is the only way we know to really enjoy what we do here. Others may disagree, but our motto is and will always be: Love, not Money (playing right now on my CD player).
© Copyright 2005 Lucio Cadeddu - www.tnt-audio.com