It has been a huge 13 months for the Audio Room, Lismore's two-channel based Hi-Fi specialist.

Not only have they had to deal with the 28 February 2022 flood but the death of founder/owner Nick Barovsky in February this year.

Phil Reed had been working with Nick for the last seven years and following Nick's death has become the new owner of the Audio Room.

"It's been a big 12 months since the flood," Phil explained, "We moved into Nick's house in Gerard's Hill because that was the only option that we had as far as being able to operate the business. There were obviously no businesses in town available to rent that were in any state of repair until now."

"We didn't miss the CBD initially because there was nobody downtown, it was a ghost town, but in the last sort of three or four months, things started to really pick back up again. You can see that there's a bit of life back in the town, new shops have come back and rebuilt and landlords have made spaces available again for the first time in a year. So, luckily we were able to rent a good shop and get set back up again."

The Audio Room story is the same one you have heard time and time again from CBD businesses. Nick and Phil put all their Hi-Fi gear and records up to 13-metre flood storage in a 14.4-metre flood.

"Everything that was in our flood storage was destroyed and had to be thrown out....18,000 records and a significant amount of audio equipment."

"So, that was tough but we've slowly built it back up by buying equipment through some of the flood grants to replace some of our floor stock. And in the last couple of months with Nick passing away we decided it's probably time to move back down into town and start the next chapter."

That's why today will be a bittersweet day for Phil, he is excited to open but will miss his friend and mentor of seven years and the 28-year founder of the company Nick Barovsky.

"It feels good to be open but of course, it's come off the back of Nick passing away, which is difficult and very sad. So it's sort of a bit conflicting. You are starting the next chapter and you want to be excited about it but at the same time, it's tinged with sadness."

What about the new stock at the Audio Room, will it be the same?

We've always believed in finding the best gear for the money. We don't stock 10 of each price point of speakers, as an example, because we know which ones are the best ones so what do you do with the other nine? We try and find the best things for the money and then that's what we stock. So, nothing's changed as far as the brands and models and makes that we are stocking."

Those brands include Cambridge Audio, Audio Research, Sonus Faber, Arielle, Rega and loads more. The Audio Room is not for those that are looking for a home theatre or looking to hook up some speakers in their home cinema. The Audio Room is for the music enthusiast and not from the digital world but the old-school two-channel turntable audio.

"Nick's been doing turntable S two-channel systems for the last 28 years in this town. To start with, it was only for the vinyl junkies but in the last sort of five years, it's really had a renaissance where young people, especially 15 to 25-year-olds have been getting into vinyl and Hi-Fi and as a result, they've dragged their parents down the same path again. They're dusting off their old records that have been sitting around for 20 years and rediscovered the superior sound that vinyl offers."

So, it's definitely a big part of our business. We don't do home theatre, we don't do Bluetooth in-ceiling speakers and all that sort of thing because for us it's about the Hi-Fi quality records, all the wireless things just get in the way."

Why is analogue so much better than digital when it comes to music?

"Basically, it hasn't been processed digitally, which is just an approximation of sound waves. So, with a decent record player to extract the information that's in those record pits, the sound is a lot superior to CD, digital audio tapes and the things that have happened over the last 40 years since CDs came in 1979."

You will find the Audio Room at shop 2/46 Magellan Street, Lismore, opposite the Pie Cart. Phil will slide open his door at 10am this morning and will then be open 10am to 5pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 1pm Saturday.