Clare Newsome:
Randomdelusion, your constant digs are becoming very tiresome....
Excellent points you make Matengawhat... horses for courses. No mag -
this one or any other - can possibly know your or anybody elses
particular needs and wants from a piece of kit.
Er, how is the above statement 'a tiresome dig?'
I was echoing the perfectly valid point that Matenga made which was that consumers have to buy a product that meets their own personal needs - a consumer's priorities may not perfectly coincide with those of review mags.
Mags - ALL MAGs (better emphasise the point) - give their own assessment of what they think a product's advantages and disadvantages are but, ultimately, those opinions are just a guide and nothing more. There are simply way too many variables in this hi-fi and home cinema malarkey for those opinions to be anything more than a pointer.
That wasn't a dig at What Hi-fi or any other of your competitors... that's just plain commonsense. Perhaps you'd rather I just said 'hey, just trust what all the mags say and keep buying isues month in, month out.' Sorry but that ain't gonna happen...
I've read your mag for about 5 years now, on and off, and I happen to think you guys do an OK job, most of the time, but I've occasionally bought kit that been 5-starred by you guys and it's been really manky... because it didn't work with the rest of my system at the time. That's something you couldn't have possibly known or allowed for when you wrote your review... which brings me back to the original point. The priorities of people in the real world don't always coincide with the priorities of reviewers.
If observations like that one, founded on basic commonsense, are going to be classified as having 'a dig' then you'll probably just end up with a forum full of sychophants cooing nice things in yr ear... not much of a forum I'd suggest.