{
  "updated": "2026-08-29T20:29:41+00:00",
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "Why the Hi-Fi Industry Hates Repair - the marketing side",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/why-hifi-industry-hates-repair-marketing-side",
      "date": "2026-08-28",
      "category": "Workshop",
      "excerpt": "Tj wrote about repair from the bench. I spent decades on the other side of the wall, selling the dream. Nobody sets out to build something unrepairable. It's just that repairability is a line item, and line items get cut."
    },
    {
      "title": "Why the Hi-Fi Industry Hates Repair",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/why-hifi-industry-hates-repair",
      "date": "2026-08-28",
      "category": "Workshop",
      "excerpt": "A lot of high-end audio is designed to be thrown away. Not on purpose, mostly. But follow the pattern: potted modules, dealer-only firmware, parts that quietly disappear."
    },
    {
      "title": "The $12 Soldering Iron Problem",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/the-twelve-dollar-soldering-iron",
      "date": "2026-08-28",
      "category": "Tools & Bench",
      "excerpt": "Repair got framed as a specialist activity you buy access to. The first real bench tool costs about twelve dollars. The actual barriers are information and parts, and those are business decisions."
    },
    {
      "title": "Ask Tj: My Vintage Receiver Hums. Is It Worth Fixing?",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/ask-tj-humming-receiver",
      "date": "2026-08-28",
      "category": "Ask Tj",
      "excerpt": "A hum is a symptom, not a diagnosis. What it usually means in vintage gear, and how to know whether the repair makes sense before anyone quotes you."
    },
    {
      "title": "Why Component-Level Repair Matters",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/why-component-level-repair-matters",
      "date": "2026-08-22",
      "category": "Repair Philosophy",
      "excerpt": "Board swapping is often the fastest way to make a repair bill bigger. Component-level work starts by finding the part that actually failed."
    },
    {
      "title": "When It Is Not Worth Fixing",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/when-not-to-fix",
      "date": "2026-08-22",
      "category": "Practical Advice",
      "excerpt": "The hardest repair answer is sometimes do not spend the money. A useful decision weighs replacement cost, parts, sentiment, and risk together."
    },
    {
      "title": "What I Learned at PS Audio",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/what-i-learned-at-ps-audio",
      "date": "2026-08-22",
      "category": "Bench Stories",
      "excerpt": "Years around audio support and bench work taught me that a repair is also a trust problem: bring the music back, then explain what happened."
    },
    {
      "title": "The Capacitor Problem: Why Old Gear Changes Over Time",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/the-capacitor-problem",
      "date": "2026-08-22",
      "category": "Audiophile",
      "excerpt": "Electrolytic capacitors age. Here is what that can mean for an amplifier, receiver, DAC, or other older piece of audio gear."
    },
    {
      "title": "Right to Repair: What It Actually Means for You",
      "url": "https://audiocynic.com/magazine/right-to-repair-means",
      "date": "2026-08-22",
      "category": "Right to Repair",
      "excerpt": "Right to Repair is about whether the device you paid for can remain yours after the first failure, not just a slogan on a poster."
    }
  ]
}