1972 - Paul Lee-Kemp sets up shop

Armed with a loan from his father and an unshakable desire to be his own boss, Sevenoaks Sound & Vision founder Paul Lee-Kemp (PLK) opens his first Hi-Fi shop at 118 London Road, Sevenoaks, Kent. Back in 1972, nobody in the area was offering Hi-Fi separates or expert system advice - realising this, PLK decided to offer enthusiasts of the burgeoning Hi-Fi movement exactly this.

Visitors to “Paul Lee Kemp Hi-Fi” also had the added advantage of having an early form of comparator board in the shop. This allowed them to listen to any speaker, amplifier, tape deck or turntable combination. “The only problem was that it had to be done in the sales area,” says PLK. “There was no dedicated listening room – but the customers loved it.”

It wasn’t long before PLK needed a bigger premises to accommodate his growing business, and so the store was relocated to a larger shop just up the road, and this is where you’ll still find our flagship store today (although it looks quite different now!)

1973 - Astronomic album sales

Following moderate success with the singles Arnold Layne and See Emily Play in 1967, and the departure of founding member Syd Barrett in 1968, progressive rock band Pink Floyd reined in their extended guitar solos that Barrett’s replacement David Gilmour called “that psychedelic noodling stuff”.

In 1973 they released The Dark Side of the Moon which went on to sell more than 45 million copies worldwide and become the sixth best selling album of all time. Not bad for a record that never even made it to number one in the UK, although it did top the US charts – but only for a week. Still a Hi-Fi demo album staple today, barely a day goes by without “Dark Side” being heard at some point in a Sevenoaks store.

1975 - VHS vs Betamax format wars

In the blue corner we have Sony with Betamax… and in the red corner, the contender JVC with its Video Home System (VHS). Thus began the cutting-edge analogue home video battle. Sony’s Betamax came out fighting with better picture quality, superior sound, and a more stable image. But the more affordable JVC system had a longer recording time (initially just one hour for Betamax versus two hours for VHS) and it soon had Sony on the ropes.

By 1986 the UK market share for Betamax had dwindled to 7.5% and it was all over by 2002 when the last Sony Betamax unit was produced. In the meantime VHS went from strength to strength until the all-conquering digital formats entered the ring with various tape and disc formats in 1992, sparking yet another format survival of the fittest.

1976 - A surround sound star is born

Stereo had been around in larger cinemas since the 1950s thanks to Cinerama and Cinemascope, but these systems used magnetic soundtracks that were expensive and fairly poor quality when compared with conventional mono optical film sound. Then along came Dolby Labs in 1976 with its SVA (stereo variable-area) system that could put a high-quality multi-channel soundtrack onto a 35mm optical sound print designed for cinema screenings.

In addition to left and right channels, there was a centre channel and a fourth surround channel – crucially, it was backwards compatible so the films could also be screened in old mono-equipped cinemas. Dolby stereo, as this four-channel system was confusingly named, was first used in the 1976 release of A Star is Born and, following Star Wars in 1977, there was no turning back.

1977 - Space invader

Where would sound and vision be today without Star Wars?

As Dolby’s director of content Stuart Bowling explains: “We launched Dolby stereo in 1976 with Barbra Streisand’s A Star is Born. However, Star Wars in 1977 is what created the demand for surround sound. Before then we were working only in stereo but from the first moment when the Star Destroyer enters from the top, audiences felt as if it was coming over them and they were cheering. It became a game-changer from a technological as well as an audience-experience perspective.”

The ability to make sound a part of a movie and tell a part of the story that you don’t see changed cinema forever.

1978 - A new acoustic dimension

Power output on paper was a modest 20W per channel and features were limited but the real-world performance blew just about every other amp below £100 off the equipment rack. Of course, the original 3020 can’t compete with today’s budget contenders but the smooth, full-bodied yet lively presentation was a revelation at the time.

Hi-Fi was noticeably different half a century ago. For a start, knobs and VU meters were the most desirable features in an amplifier, rather than musicality and finesse. And then along came the NAD 3020 integrated amplifier. A price tag of just £71 made it a bargain even in 1979, and this minimalist black (well, okay, very dark grey) box is what ignited the market for high performance budget Hi-Fi.

1979 - A walk on the wired side

Well-heeled reporters in the 70s were able to record interviews in mono on something called a Sony Pressman. A great gadget in its own way but the Pressman was decidedly uncool and never intended for the general public. Prompted by Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka, the company’s tape division took a Pressman, modified it by losing the recording function, adding stereo playback, and redesigning the case, and on 21 June 1979 announced the undeniable cool, blue and silver Sony Walkman to the world.

Sony always suspected it would be popular and predicted sales of 5,000 a month – in fact more than 50,000 of the playback-only, headphone-only personal cassette stereos were sold in the first two months.

Originally called ‘Sound-about’ in the US and ‘Stowaway’ in the UK, “Walkman” was ultimately the moniker which stuck and the name even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in 1986. In the 1980s and 90s Sony truly ruled the personal stereo roost. Right up until a somewhat dormant computer company called Apple introduced the iPod…

1980 - Sevenoaks spreads its wings

The company philosophy of being polite, friendly and respectful to customers, suppliers and staff alike – while demonstrating and selling the very best real-world Hi-Fi – pays dividends and the Sevenoaks chain is ready to expand. A new branch in Woolwich, South London was the first to be added, swiftly followed by other premises in Chatham, Tunbridge Wells and Brighton serving customers throughout the south-east. Business expansion continued throughout the next decade with a further four branches being added around the country.

1982 - Silver dream machine

On 31 August 1982, an announcement was made in Tokyo that Sony, CBS, Philips and Polygram had jointly developed the world’s first CD system. And so the digital music age was born. The first generally available CD player was Sony’s CDP-101 with its model name being a reference to the binary language used by the digital medium.

Early reports were hampered by a lack of discs to listen to – Stereophile’s reviewer said: “The truth is, I really don’t know [how it sounds] because I’ve only listened to the two discs sent with the unit and none of the selections were recorded to audiophile standards.” Hi-Fi Review praised the 101’s characteristic wide, open soundstage but the “incessant electronic glare” of the treble was found tiring… until they hooked it up to a budget NAD 3020A amplifier when “the sound was much easier to live with.”

1983 - Nait King Cole

From the earliest days, Salisbury-based Naim Audio was known for its knockout-sounding minimalist amplifiers. And 1983’s original Nait (as in Naim Integrated amplifier) took budget sound quality and minimalist specs to a new level. No tone controls or other frippery here – just a small graphite box with a big volume knob, tiny balance control, three inputs and an on/off switch.

Like Rolls-Royce, Naim never officially revealed the power output but 13-15W per channel with a fair tail wind sounded about right. But what Watts they were! It wasn’t so much the rich yet detailed soundscape conjured up by the Nait, but the way it communicated emotion to the listener in a way that many high-end amps at the time could not match. While other integrated amplifiers were struggling to reproduce Hi-Fi sound, the Nait delivered pure music.

1983 - And the winner is…

If you wanted to read about the first ever What Hi-Fi? Awards in 1983, a copy of the magazine would have cost you 85p. Inside you’d find 13 pages dedicated to announcing 84 nominated products across 14 categories. Remember, back then there was no such thing as AV, streaming, multi-room or wireless – it was all about the music.

CD had just been born and the Philips CD100 beat off five digital opponents, while the Rega Planar III kept the vinyl flag flying as the top turntable. But the top gong went to a good old analogue cassette deck – Nakamichi’s £199 front-loading BX2. Twin heads, belt drive, LED meters and both Dolby B and C noise reduction were state-of-the-art features on a machine that, when loaded with a TDK SA cassette, actually sounded pretty damn good.

1984 - Dynamite with a laser beam

Imagine a high-quality analogue playback system that uses a two-sided 12-inch disc that you need to manually turn over to play the other side. But instead of the disc being made from black vinyl and playing music, it looks like a giant CD and contains video. That’s LaserDisc – the videophile format of choice right into the 1990s before being killed off by the smaller and more convenient, all-digital DVD.

Offering better picture and sound quality than VHS and Betamax tapes, the LaserDisc system was brought to life as a consumer format by Pioneer’s LD-700 in 1984. It replaced the previous helium-neon laser with a solid-state laser diode and added a more convenient front-loading disc bay in place of a top-loading system.

1985 - Brothers before Bros

The year before boy band Bros (remember them?) first appeared, rock band Dire Straits released their fifth studio album – Brothers in Arms. Recorded at AIR Studios on the island of Montserrat and, as a result of frontman Mark Knopfler’s constant striving for better sound quality, it was one of the first albums to be recorded on a Sony 24-track digital tape machine. Despite mediocre initial reviews (NME said it contained the ‘tritest would-be melodies in history’) Brothers in Arms soon became a Hi-Fi audition staple. In 1986 it won a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical and famously, was the first album to sell one million copies in the CD format, and to outsell its LP version.

1988 - Unique speaker technology

KEF speakers are instantly recognised today by their widespread use of the trademark Uni-Q point source driver array in which the tweeter sits in the throat of the midrange or mid/bass unit, giving better focus and more accurate dispersion of sound. But prior to the 1988 introduction of the C35 bookshelf model, this technology had never been seen or heard before.

In addition to excellent performance, the Uni-Q design’s symmetrical dispersion gave the C35 another big advantage over other, more conventional, two-way bookshelf speakers – it could be placed on its side on a shallow shelf without compromising the sound.

1992 - Bats, cats and penguins

Although Dolby had launched a surround sound system 16 years earlier, it was Dolby SR-D (Spectral Recording-Digital) technology, later known as Dolby Digital, that really moved the technology into high gear, heralding the beginnings of modern home cinema 5.1 surround sound.

Released in 1992, Batman Returns was the first movie to feature 6-channel Dolby Digital; front left and right, centre, left and right surround, and subwoofer channel for the low end. The movie was directed by Tim Burton and featured Micheal Keaton as Batman, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman (more than 60 latex catsuits were created for the six-month shoot at a cost of $1,000 each), and Danny Devito as the deranged Penguin.

Punk/rock/post punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees feature in the soundtrack with Face to Face. Dolby Digital surrounded our homes a few years later courtesy of LaserDisc; in 1995, Clear and Present Danger was the first Dolby Digital Laserdisc release followed by True Lies, Stargate, Forrest Gump, and Interview with the Vampire

1992 - Format Wars: The sequel

Thirty years after its introduction, by 1992 sales of cassette tapes were starting to show some signs of decline. Waiting in the wings were two rival portable digital recording systems; the MiniDisc created by Sony, and Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), created by Philips and Matsushita.

Originally, Sony had thought that it could steam into the tape market with a digital version to supersede the cassette, but the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) was a disaster; technical delays meant that it was not launched until 1989 and the price of the machines was out of most peoples reach. MiniDisc was more popular although pre-recorded albums were limited; Sony had sold 22 million MD players before they ceased production in 2013. DCC did not fair as well, it was quietly discontinued in 1996.

1995 - Sevenoaks moves from Kent

Although Sevenoaks Hi-fi was expanding, the two partners Paul Lee-Kemp and Peter O’Brien wanted to quicken the pace. The answer was to develop a franchise scheme where Hi-Fi shops could benefit from being part of the Sevenoaks Hi-Fi brand.

Launched at the Franchise Show at Olympia, London in 1995, the take-up was rapid and impressive; within a short space of time, the brand expanded rapidly with another 30 Sevenoaks branches stretching from Aberdeen to Plymouth.

“Because we were selling something that little bit more unusual, there wasn't a suitable Hi-Fi shop in every town. So, if you wanted a Goldring deck, NAD amplifier and Kef speakers, for example, you probably had to seek them out, as opposed to just walking down the high street” explains Paul Lee-Kemp.

1997 - Yamaha’s multi-tasking master

Besides the release of the film Fargo (the wonderfully dark neo-noir crime comedy from the Cohen Brothers), there weren’t many entertainment highlights in 1997, unless of course you include Katrina and the Waves winning the Eurovision Song contest with Love shine a light – remember that? No, neither do we… However, in the homes of early adopting movie fans, something was stirring… Yamaha introduced the massive and highly capable DSP A-1, the first AV amplifier to incorporate both Dolby Digital and DTS audio decoding.

Whilst the new AV surround sound formats were rapidly gaining ground, Yamaha understood that the rest of the world does not always move as quickly, and therefore the DSP-A-1 was also loaded with inputs for older formats including five inputs for video sources, including two video recorders, and five dedicated audio inputs (including a phono preamp). Seven channels were on offer – five for Dolby Digital and DTS formats, with an additional two for more front speakers for Yamaha CINEMA DSP. One reviewer said at the time, “the DSP-A1 contains the most refined versions of Yamaha’s Digital Sound Field processing that I’ve heard since the technology’s introduction in 1986”.

1997 - Brave New (disc) World

Back in the 90s, a ‘worldwide launch’ usually started in Japan or America and slowly trickled out to the rest of the world over subsequent months. Such was the case with DVD players… Toshiba launched the SD-3000 in Japan in November 1996, and in America Sony introduced the DVP-S7000 in April 1997.

In the UK, the first DVD player appeared in June that year, the Thomson DTH-1000U styled by French designer Philippe Starck and costing £600. Hot on its heels was the Pioneer DVL 9, which could also handle LaserDisc, Video CD and CD. The birth of DVD could easily have been problematic with rival camps working on different technologies – sound familiar? Thankfully, to avoid yet another format turf war, the Sony/ Philips camp ditched its MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD) format and fell into line with the Super Density Disc (SD) gang: Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC.

This clearly helped the fledgling DVD format, as by 2002, about 80 million DVD players had been sold, making it the fastest-adopted consumer electronics device ever. At the format’s height in 2009, research showed that 90% of households in the UK had a DVD player.

1997 - Star Trek reality

Thirty years earlier, the best thing on TV was Star Trek with the USS Enterprise featuring a huge flat viewing screen on the bridge; this was the stuff of dreams, until 1997. Early that year, Fujitsu boldly went where no-one had been before when it introduced the first flat screen TV, using a plasma display panel (PDP technology, small cells containing plasma, ionized gas that responds to electric fields).

The 42in screen was a mere 75mm thick, and the unit weighed in at just 18kg – and it could be wall mounted. This really was science fiction come to life. However, it was Pioneer in December 1997 with the “world’s first 50-inch high-definition XGA plasma display for consumer use” that caught the public’s imagination, even with it’s £10,000 price tag.

2001 - Joining the webinauts

We had a different language back at the beginning of this century; world-wide-web, 56k dial-up tones (the sound of nightmares), dotcom bubbles, dancing baby screensavers, and illegal MP3 sites for ‘sharing’ (i.e. stealing) music.

In 2001, Sevenoaks went “.co.uk” with the launch of its first website, which was effectively an extended online brochure, with information about the stores and brands, rather than offering any option to buy online – that didn’t come until 2012. What Sevenoaks did have at the beginning of 2000 was a very successful and efficient mail order service; make a phone call or send a cheque by post and your products were delivered by Securicor within a few days.

2004 - Bouncing off the walls

Yamaha wasn’t the first on the market with a soundbar (that accolade went to Altec Lansing which introduced it’s ‘The Voice Of The Digital Theatre’ bar in 1998) but the YSP-1 was the world’s first system to produce realistic 5.1 surround sound from a single unit. Yamaha preferred the name Digital Sound Projector to soundbar for the YSP-1, which boasted 40 speakers, augmented by two bass drivers, all installed into a single cabinet.

Throw in some mighty clever processing to project beams of sound all around the room and you had a very credible 5.1 surround sound system without the need for extra speakers to the side or at the rear. Yamaha continued with the technology, notably with the excellent YSP-2500 in 2014, and later, in 2015, with the larger, more powerful YSP- 5600, the world’s first Dolby Atmos soundbar.

2005 - Beautiful Vision

To reflect the growing importance of televisions in its product portfolio, Sevenoaks added “Vision” to its name and this has remained in the sign above its doors to this day. Those gargantuan Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) televisions were still big (in every sense); Sony’s massive 40-inch Trinitron was one of the biggest consumer CRTs ever produced, weighing over 130kg – compare that to a 55in flat screen Sony of today that weighs a mere 15kg.

Worldwide, CRT TVs still accounted for nearly 80% of all sets sold, 15% were LCD and less than 5% were plasma. Within two years, LCD TVs were selling more than those bulky old CRT sets, and it was the beginning of the end for CRT.

2005 - Multichoice multiroom

As NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity trundled across the surface of Mars, back on earth, the Apple Ipod Nano was launched, as was a video sharing platform called YouTube. It was also the first time the then-unfamiliar name of Sonos started to become heard.

Start-up Sonos was founded in California – where else? – in 2002 and two years later it was showing its wireless multiroom prototypes at tech exhibitions in America. In the picture below you can see Tom Cullen (co founder of Sonos) demonstrating the ZP100 and CR100 to a certain Bill Gates at CES in January 2005.

In June 2005 Sonos launched the ZonePlayer ZP100, with the first production run going to the UK. The ZP100 had a built-in 50-watts-per-channel stereo amplifier to power conventional passive speakers. In effect, this was the first streaming amplifier, wirelessly streaming online music, internet radio and music from a computer or NAS drive. Launched alongside the ZP100 was the snazzy looking CR100 controller, a high-tech wireless remote with colour screen and a touchpad scroll wheel. In 2009, Sonos launched its first wireless speaker, the ZonePlayer S5.

2006 - Box Set edition: Format Wars – Here we go again

Like a rerun of the first, second and third Punic wars, yet another format war rumbled into being in 2006; the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray would decide what would be the next physical home media format – and which would ultimately lead to disc-death for one of the opponents.

Both sides had formidable form: The Blu-ray Disc Foundation was made up of brands such as by Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and 20th Century Fox. The HD DVD Promotion Group had heavyweights such as Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA, and Intel. Some studios decided to offer support to both sides, including Paramount Home Entertainment, BBC Video, and Discovery Channel. At the 2006 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, there were many more examples of Blu-ray player prototypes on show than HD DVD players, but the fight was far from over.

Front-line fighting moved into gaming consoles; the Xbox 360 backed HD DVD but when the Sony PlayStation development team added a Blu-ray player into the hugely successful PlayStation 3 console, the writing was on the wall. The battle dragged on for another two years, but in the end, general consumer electronic industry support for Blu-ray, coupled with the decision by movie studios to support Blu-ray, meant that in 2008 it was time for HD DVD to hoist the white flag.

2006 - Definitive moments in TV

The first peek at high-definition television (HDTV) in the UK started with trials by TV cable company Telewest (now part of Virgin Media) to 400 customers in South London at the end of 2005. In May 2006 Sky launched its satellite HDTV service and in the same month BBC HD began as a trial station on cable, satellite and Freeview (in London only).

The first programme to be broadcast that was specifically made for HD was Planet Earth, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. The HD channel was officially launched in 2007, only to be closed down 2012 and replaced by BBC2 HD in 2013. In 2008 both the BBC and ITV announced HD availability on Freesat for the whole country.

2007 - Is it on Netflix?

2008 - Spotify connected

Back in early 2000, just as digital music was cranking up, the different internet sources for music were a bit like the wild west. Hugely controversial file sharing sites offered a torrent of downloads, with no royalties or payments going to the artists; the most notorious of these was The Pirate Bay (still lurking), Limewire (closed down), Napster (now big and legal) and Kickass torrents (closed down). In response to the piracy problem the music industry was facing, Spotify started as a small start-up in Stockholm, Sweden.

Launching two years later, the company offered music fans a free service with advertising, in the hope they would upgrade to the ad-free subscription. Spotify launched in the UK in 2009 and originally users could purchase tracks but this feature was removed in 2013. Since early 2021 Spotify has been promising a higher quality option called Spotify HiFi which will deliver music in ‘CD-quality, lossless audio format’. It has still not materialised, despite this being available on lots of other streaming sites such as Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, Tidal and Qobuz...

2009 - Uniti’d we stand

“This is the most innovative product Naim has ever made, and one of its finest: expect it to be a trendsetter” so said What Hi-Fi? In their review of the marvellous all-in-one NaimUniti.

Back then What Hi-Fi? was all over the place in coming up with a genre for the Uniti, mainly because it was so ground-breaking – they said “We finally settled on 'CD/Wi-Fi receiver' to describe the NaimUniti – well, it seemed a bit neater than 'CD receiver with DAC, iPod-connectivity, internet/DAB/FM radio and wireless music streamer thingy’, which was our first rather clumsy stab.”

Besides being a fine sounding, extremely versatile machine, the original model (we never understood why there wasn’t a space between Naim and Uniti) was also the Granddaddy or Grandthingy to a plethora of other all-in-one players including UnitiQute (2010), SuperUniti (2011), UnitiLite (2012) and the current Uniti Atom, Star and Nova that first arrived on the scene in 2017

2013 - Return of the hero

33 years earlier, about a half a million Hi-Fi fans benefitted from the budget redefining NAD 3020 amplifier. Through the interim years various upgrades manifested in the form of the 3020A, B, i and an "almost identical" audiophile iteration, the NAD 3120.

In 1999, the NAD brand was taken charge of by the Lenbrook Group in Canada, which continues to make huge strides in its development, not least with the class-leading Masters Series. NAD’s 40th birthday was marked with a ‘new’ digital amplifier, the NAD D 3020.

This was a real milestone moment.

Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, NAD's long serving designer, chiefly responsible for both the original 3020 and the D 3020, summed it up in an interview with Stereophile magazine: “Meeting the objectives of price, performance, size, and efficiency was something else. The challenge led to some new ideas and the application of some really advanced technology”. It worked. The NAD D 3020 stomped on the competition to take the What Hi-Fi? Award for the Best stereo amplifier up to £500 in 2013. Erik sadly passed away in 2018.

2017 - Spreading our wings

Around this time, we felt it was right to start branching out, literally. We hadn’t opened a new store for some time but once we got into our stride, there was no stopping us; we had soon opened Nottingham (2017), Solihull (2017), Oxford (2018), Swiss Cottage (2018), Manchester (2019) and Chelsea (2019). Chelsea wasn’t strictly a new opening but the transformation from a refit was so dramatic that we’re happy to include it in the list.

The main rationale behind opening more shops is to not only to give our customers more choice, but also to reduce the necessity to travel long distances to find the Sevenoaks service our customers love, and we are planning to open more new stores very soon.

2019 - Sevenoaks sponsors What Hi-Fi Awards

The What Hi-Fi? Awards for the best in home audio and cinema kit have been around for nearly 40 years - not quite as long as us, but pretty close! There is no doubting their influence, not only in the UK, but across the world, and getting an award (or not) can literally change a product’s fate. You may not always agree with the chosen winners, but the awards are fair and honest. This is one of the reasons why we were invited to become the sole sponsor; our values are in the same vein – honesty, integrity, an appreciation of technology and good value for money. Let’s just see what the winners are this year, we can’t wait!

2022 - Sevenoaks celebrates 50 wonderful years in business

To celebrate our 50th Anniversary we held a number of special in-store events during the summer. We had fantastic new kit making its much anticipated UK debut, as well as “meet and greets” with key manufacturers, as well as free gifts, and a prize draw which saw several lucky winners take away some fantastic prizes. We can’t wait to see what the next 50 years brings!