It's not easy to describe the Internet… No, for Heaven's sake, I am not going to begin one of those improbable and trite analyses of a phenomenon which still is difficult to characterise as the 'Net is, the opening sentence is only an excuse to briefly explain the beginnings, the gestation and the timings of this new on-line magazine. Genesis: many or a few years ago, it depends. The urgency of a magazine which would have been independent and, at the same time, not an underground one, is a matter I have been feeling for a long time, and I have been sharing it with the other VHF people since a couple of years. Gestation: necessarily long. Our target has always been to offer a magazine which wasn't going to be one of the many or of the few ones (you can decide by yourself, weighting the number of the on-line magazines about the High End against the whole of the Internet), but "the" Internet magazine about audio and video connected to audio. Maybe an over-ambitious target for a periodic (a word which assumes a vaguer meaning in this electronic hyper-Uranus) magazine born in a small and troubled country such as our own Italy; but, at the end of the day - taking the fact for granted, that we don't disdain our own origins - we surely enjoy a little bit of apolidism, as the Net is global and super-national. Language problems? We will have to solve them during the magazine "stabilisation" time. Timings: and that's the heart of the matter.

Thinking about this project, putting test pages and partial issues (does "issue" still make sense?) on line for testing purposes, reasoning, comparing, taking our time, doing and undoing, we understood that Videohifi.com was dangerously running close to be a huge Penelope's shroud nested around a model whose proportions and technologies are forever expanding. So, we eventually realised that we were to stop pondering, mounting and unmounting graphics, lest we were going on for ages. The result is that, from today on Videohifi.com is on line, more precisely, its prototype is on line, a number zero maybe a little bit thin content-wise, but which will grow week by week, until it reaches its final - "final"? does this word, in this virtual world, make any sense? - form.

Videohifi.com isn't a "no profit" effort, we appreciate the fewer and fewer people whoi succeed in offering a zero cost product, but this isn't our target to begin with. We know that a high quality product, as we want to be, is going to have some costs, and that people who are starting this enterprise up aren't venture capitalists, but professionals and hobbyists who are carrying the burden on their own. To make matters simple and honest, there will be, in the future, a way in which we will be able to break even. The novelty is that nobody is going to impose banner ads or access fees overnight and with no previous advice whatsoever. We want to decide together with you, the readership, or, better still, it will be you, our readership, to decide, only when you will have been able to appreciate our efforts and the time will have been given to you to evaluate the different solutions to keep Videohifi.com on-line and growing.

Videohifi.com is dedicated to audio and music in their multiple forms, and watches with interest, but without blind over-enthusiasm, the interactions between video and those forms, and the possible advancements provided by the recent high-performance reproduction technologies in particular. At the same time, Videohifi.com will be the place in which you will find discussion about traditional, stable (older) technologies, analogue recording and replay techniques, vintage hi-fi and quality DIY, psycho-acoustics and history of both industry and design. As you understand, we offer no certainty; we are sure that, in a world which is unable to offer any certainty about matters much more important than our beloved music listening habits, it's a narrow minded and hardly far sighted position to be a partisan, be it for or against digital, for or against analogue, traditionalistic or modernistic. It goes without saying that we look forward to reading your opinion.

English edition editor note: we are a bunch of non-native English speaking guys. During this beta testing and stabilisation period, we need our precious English speaking readership collaboration, in order to correct any English mistake or inappropriateness. Our eternal gratitude to all those who will, after a good laugh, drop us a line telling us the reason. ( I.Z.)