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Rich guys and reviewers running amok

The same has always struck me about high performance cars.... when many are old enough to afford them they are well out of the "boy racer" stage and no longer have the will, the ability or the reactions to use the performance!

At least by then they've got the common sense not to crash the bloody things ;)
 
^^ Don't know about that. I live near to Ikea, J26 off the M1 (Giltbrook, Notts) and most evenings hear 'REVVVVV, bang, bang, bang; REVVVVV, bang, bang, bang.' Going home last night, someone had mangled the railings near a pedestrian crossing just off the Ikea roundabout. You wouldn't think we are heading towards a global warming disaster with some attitudes.
 
I have a stash of old hi-fi magazines accumulated from the early 80's onwards. It astonishing to see the change in cost of the top tier! If you read Hi-Fi Answers or Audiophile or even Hi-Fi News from the late 80's you realise that so many of the reviews were actually of very affordable kit from Rega, Mission, Kef and even naim's lower/middle end kit was seen as pretty aspirational! Stuff like the Linn Axis or Manticore Mantra was seen as middle tier and the top flight stuff like an LP12 or Gyrodec cost under £1000 plus arm. Things like SME IV (£895) were the stuff of dreams!

Now if you pick up a copy of Hi-Fi News (pretty much the only surviving mag from the era) it's not hard to find components that cost upwards of £10k. Given the RPI since 1987 is now at 300% in the UK, it means that the mags, the gear and the high end have moved dramatically upwards.

The truth I suspect is that many of the readers of the magazines are no longer in a position to buy most of the kit they review. It's unclear to me whether this is because the magazines have discovered people would prefer to read a review of a £20k streamer than say a modestly priced Cambridge one or perhaps it's driven by the ego of the editors and manufacturers and the consumers aren't being well served!

My own take on it (and I wrote for the rags over several years) is that the readers aren't currently being very well served. Most audiophiles want to obtain the best sound they possibly can for the modest budget they have to spend. Nowadays there are few articles in the mags that help them by discussing the impact of record cleaning, how to optimise VTA, how to minimise electrical interference, how to place speakers and kit in a room, which albums are worthy demo discs and what relatively affordable (say sub £3000) components offer the best sound/VFM. How many mags even take questions from readers anymore or do secret shopper visits to hi-fi shops to evaluate them? That used to be a big part of many mags back in the day!

I'd love to see a vibrant magazine market but with the advent of the internet magazine sales have declined. The problem with the internet however is that many of the reviews are written by amateurs who lack the experience and perspective to make balanced judgements. Anybody who reads the reviews on Tripadvisor will be well aware of the widely differing views of almost any restaurant because everyone's expectations are so different. By contrast an experienced reviewer knows very quickly whether a product is performing at the right level for its price and can very quickly compare it to its peers and form a balanced judgement. The better internet sites know this and pay for experienced reviewers but there's a whole load of dross (and the odd gem) out there written by unpaid enthusiasts.

Birdseed007
 


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