What Hi-Fi Challenge

[admin_exported]

I have been visiting this forum for some time now, with a view to getting my first hi fi set up. I have to say I've been baffled by all the options. I have recently noticed that there are quite a few people on here who advocate vintage gear over new budget gear. This only made things more confusing for a novice like myself. This made me think, and I wondered if anyone else might agree that this could make a good feature for the magazine. Similar to some of the Top Gear challenges, I would be interested to see if a group of your reviewers were given a budget, say £500, who could come back with the best system. What do others think? With all the experience at your disposal, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a bargain, should it? A comparison with your best buy budget systems would also be useful for anyone weighing up their options.

Just a thought!

 

[matthewpiano]

Sounds like an excellent idea to me and would make for fascinating reading.

 

[JoelSim]

Great idea, and we could get Mr E to buy his stuff from the American Deep South with a 'Man love rules' T-shirt to find out just how open-minded these rednecks really are.

 

[JoelSim]

Gotta go anyway, need to watch that muppet Griffin dig a hole

 

[plastic penguin]

Cowps:

I have been visiting this forum for some time now, with a view to getting my first hi fi set up. I have to say I've been baffled by all the options. I have recently noticed that there are quite a few people on here who advocate vintage gear over new budget gear. This only made things more confusing for a novice like myself. This made me think, and I wondered if anyone else might agree that this could make a good feature for the magazine. Similar to some of the Top Gear challenges, I would be interested to see if a group of your reviewers were given a budget, say £500, who could come back with the best system. What do others think? With all the experience at your disposal, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a bargain, should it? A comparison with your best buy budget systems would also be useful for anyone weighing up their options.

Just a thought!

Sounds wonderful - hi-fi Bargain Hunt (anyone on the forum with a fake suntan?

).

 

[John Duncan]

I suggested this aaaaaages ago. 'Pah', they said. Maybe I'll go downstairs and have another word...

But to be fair, another mag does this every month I think...

 

[Anonymous]

Cowps:
I have been visiting this forum for some time now, with a view to getting my first hi fi set up. I have to say I've been baffled by all the options. I have recently noticed that there are quite a few people on here who advocate vintage gear over new budget gear. This only made things more confusing for a novice like myself. This made me think, and I wondered if anyone else might agree that this could make a good feature for the magazine. Similar to some of the Top Gear challenges, I would be interested to see if a group of your reviewers were given a budget, say £500, who could come back with the best system. What do others think? With all the experience at your disposal, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a bargain, should it? A comparison with your best buy budget systems would also be useful for anyone weighing up their options.

Just a thought!

I only can afford to buy secondhand and I think that What Hi Fi misses a trick by not publishing some kind of history book of WHF reviews, I think that there are many good ideas for combining and sustaining secondhand gear (from modding through to your idea which I think is brilliant). I think that they ignore the rising 'cottage' industry where people on Ebay create products will emulate higher priced products (there are various categories from interconnects/mains cables through to modded DAC modules etc)... and I feel as though my attempts to ask on this forum have been ignored (I say this not bitterly and I do not think that it is done in a deliberate way but no-one from the magazine has taken time to answer).

However... in their defence. What Hi Fi is a magazine that only has certain resources available to it, they only have a certain budget, certain number of editorial staff and it only has a certain number of pages... the remit was widened from Hi Fi to Sound & Vision and they have to allocate those resources into a coherent strategy. I would imagine that a large portion of their income would come from the advertising that is bought in the magazine by the manufacturers who (and I am not particularly weeping for them) have to compete in a crowded market place and develop new products and move forward... I am not sure that they would be so keen to do that (pay money to WHF, not stop development) if WHF actively started to ignore the 'new' in favour of promoting the secondhand market, such a strategy would not only be harmful to WHF but to the industry as a whole - think of how influential WHF are.

I would also like to take your Top Gear example and use it a bit more. Top Gear no longer have a secondhand car 'expert'. Indeed when a secondhand car is purchased in Top Gear it is usually as a comic foil in order to show up the presenters or the cars themselves... Last year sometime I began to mildly sicken of Top Gear and I found myself actually being nostalgic for the 'old' format. I mooned after it for nearly an entire episode thinking things like - 'What use is this? When am I ever going to need a comprehensive review of a bloody Aston Martin? When am I ever going to sit in an Aston Martin. Remember when you used to get that Goffey fella telling you about how easy it was to put the seats down....'

And then I did actively remember that Goffey fella telling me about how easy it was to put the seats down and I kicked myself... who wants to get mired into that stuff? What we want is to see the lastest, the fastest, the sexiest and, in our case, the loudest. I am never going to sound test any Plinius stuff... or Naim (well maybe The Uniti - one day)... or Copland... or Sugden etc. But I like looking at it. I like someone telling me how good it is. Hi fi porn! phwaor. So, if you think about, do you really want your favourite hi fi mag to give up reviewing the brand new and sexy and deote any space to the secondhand market - which is so cheap and so covered on the net that you really do not need them to do it at all.... there are plenty of places to get the info goods on secondhand goods.

So maybe your article idea is good as a one off, I do not think that they will do it, but it would be nice to have a more consumer orietated 'credit crunch beating' issue - as a one off.

 

[carter]

sounds good but it would need to be a video podcast as well,who in the what hifi team would play the clarkson,may and hamond rolls

or dare i say bradbury,peri and ottis

 

[Clare Newsome]

We used to have a tester who was (still is) a Hammond-a-like

Point taken re second-hand hi-fi (which we did carry an in-mag feature on early this year, and will do so again early next year).It gets a lot of coverage on these Forums, too - and I can honestly say that i've never had any manufacturer denounce coverage of second-hand kit!

We're in discussions re making our archive available - as our colleagues on Gramophone have recently done - but as you can imagine in these recessionary times, funding isn't limitless! Introducing a Classifieds section to these Forums is also a goal.

But back to the challenge part.... Definitely something worth considering as a feature/video, once we have the time/money to do so!

 

[JoelSim]

Clare Newsome:
We used to have a tester who was (still is) a Hammond-a-like

Point taken re second-hand hi-fi (which we did carry an in-mag feature on early this year, and will do so again early next year).It gets a lot of coverage on these Forums, too - and I can honestly say that i've never had any manufacturer denounce coverage of second-hand kit!

We're in discussions re making our archive available - as our colleagues on Gramophone have recently done - but as you can imagine in these recessionary times, funding isn't limitless! Introducing a Classifieds section to these Forums is also a goal.

But back to the challenge part.... Definitely something worth considering as a feature/video, once we have the time/money to do so!

If you could just get the Classifieds section up in the next couple of weeks, that would be perfect...

 

[Anonymous]

Clare Newsome:
We used to have a tester who was (still is) a Hammond-a-like

Point taken re second-hand hi-fi (which we did carry an in-mag feature on early this year, and will do so again early next year).It gets a lot of coverage on these Forums, too - and I can honestly say that i've never had any manufacturer denounce coverage of second-hand kit!

We're in discussions re making our archive available - as our colleagues on Gramophone have recently done - but as you can imagine in these recessionary times, funding isn't limitless! Introducing a Classifieds section to these Forums is also a goal.

But back to the challenge part.... Definitely something worth considering as a feature/video, once we have the time/money to do so!

Well I think that 'denounce' might be taking my point a little far, but surely the focus on 'new' must, in part, be motivated not just by the fact that that market is large enough to fill a magazine but also because you are supporting a industry with pays you back with considerable advertising revenue? If the secondhand market were able to offer a similar return surely there would be a secondhand section in the magazine? So I would not expect some kind of manufacturer picket outside WHF if they decided to cover secondhand items, in a regular way, but at the same time the change in emphasis might be reflected in the revenues? If only because WHF would lose at least four pages within the mag & some manufacturers might see that as biting the hand that feeds (this is pure conjecture, of course, but not entirely beyond the realms of possibility? Not having any direct experience I can fully accept that I could be wrong).

 

[Andrew Everard]

bloatedgut:Well I think that 'denounce' might be taking my point a little far, but surely the focus on 'new' must, in part, be motivated not just by the fact that that area is large enough to fill a magazine but also because you are supporting a industry with pays you back with considerable advertising revenue? If the secondhand market were able to offer a similar return surely there would be a secondhand section in the magazine? So I would not expect some kind of manufacturer picket outside WHF if they decided to cover secondhand items, but at the same time the change in emphasis might be reflected in the revenues? If only because WHF would lose at least four pages within the mag.

This is straying dangerously close to the 'advertisers dictate content' argument again, but if you follow that erroneous path one might suggest that including more secondhand equipment might draw advertising from those companies specialising in selling used equipment.

 

[the record spot]

Clare Newsome:
We used to have a tester who was (still is) a Hammond-a-like

Point taken re second-hand hi-fi (which we did carry an in-mag feature on early this year, and will do so again early next year).It gets a lot of coverage on these Forums, too - and I can honestly say that i've never had any manufacturer denounce coverage of second-hand kit!

We're in discussions re making our archive available - as our colleagues on Gramophone have recently done - but as you can imagine in these recessionary times, funding isn't limitless! Introducing a Classifieds section to these Forums is also a goal.

But back to the challenge part.... Definitely something worth considering as a feature/video, once we have the time/money to do so!

Well, if you need a reviewer who's available immediately, cheap to run and has a knack for landing a good deal in these recessionary times, look no further!

Matt, dim_span and moi could set-up in business the amount of kit the three of us have gone through this past few months...!

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:
bloatedgut:Well I think that 'denounce' might be taking my point a little far, but surely the focus on 'new' must, in part, be motivated not just by the fact that that area is large enough to fill a magazine but also because you are supporting a industry with pays you back with considerable advertising revenue? If the secondhand market were able to offer a similar return surely there would be a secondhand section in the magazine? So I would not expect some kind of manufacturer picket outside WHF if they decided to cover secondhand items, but at the same time the change in emphasis might be reflected in the revenues? If only because WHF would lose at least four pages within the mag.

This is straying dangerously close to the 'advertisers dictate content' argument again, but if you follow that erroneous path one might suggest that including more secondhand equipment might draw advertising from those companies specialising in selling used equipment.

Well that is a problem with discussing this, because I do not believe for one second that what I am referring to is overt, but it must, at some level, be a consideration & as for the companies specialising in secondhand equipment they might come in and fill the gap, but I do not think that their margins and liquidity would compete with the major manufacturers.

I stress again that there is no accusation or finger being pointed here... but markets evolve in directions that liquidity allows them to evolve into, so WHF has a business model and that model is going to be supported partially from ad revenues and partially from cover price and you guys (the controllers) have to fine tune that mix to make Haymarket profit (I realise that we all know this so I am not being as patronising as I seem, just trying to get to the point, which is...) so my original point was that a consideration in including a dedicated secondhand section might have to be (on an economic level) would it threaten that mix, what might get left out and would that upset that balance.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Again, incorrect - our advertising sales staff sell on the circulation and reach of the magazine, not on specific content.

So there's no fine-tuning on the part of the editorial team in order to maximise advertising revenue; neither is there any pressure from the advertising sales team to do so.

 

[the record spot]

In any case, other titles - and the current Hi Fi Choice has a section on what secondhand turntables you can expect to pick up for £500 as a case in point - already offer this anyway. Hi Fi World does plenty in that regard too and so on...WHFS&V is different as it's one title that typically doesn't include secondhand kit within its' pages.

 

[John Duncan]

JoelSim:If you could just get the Classifieds section up in the next couple of weeks, that would be perfect...

Our survey says...

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:
Again, incorrect - our advertising sales staff sell on the circulation and reach of the magazine, not on specific content.

So there's no fine-tuning on the part of the editorial team in order to maximise advertising revenue; neither is there any pressure from the advertising sales team to do so.

Well again I take your point and the success of WHF is that it does seperate out the sales and reviews team, so their is no bleed from one to other. I get the impression that because of the reach of the magazine and the fact that the reviewers do such a good job manufacturers are willing to submit their products in a spirit of competition - i.e. they do not have prior expectations and they would not pull advertising if reviews did not meet their ideas.

But I, again, do not think that I was being that exact in my point making. I do not think that you all sit down at a desk, editorial and sales and debate 'The Mix' and worry if Meridian will pull if you criticise their new box and if you can all afford to 'do secondhand'. But that does not change the fact that a successful product like WHF does have one (a mix) and in order for you to be a success there has to be, at some level, a person where editorial and sales responsibility merge and it is that persons responsibility to make sure that that mix is right and that the product works and is a success.

I also re-make the other points that I am not criticising and that I was putting forward an idea of why secondhand is not covered in WHF whilst acknowledging that I could be wrong, not having had any Haymarket sales or editorial experience.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Manufacturers have pulled their advertising when they haven't liked our reviews. But that's the commercial team's problem, not editorial's

 

[Andrew Everard]

And there, bloatedgut, you have the view of the person you mentioned who sits at the point where all parts of the magazine meet.

Couldn't be much more unequivocal, could it?

 

[Anonymous]

Clare Newsome:
Manufacturers have pulled their advertising when they haven't liked our reviews. But that's the commercial team's problem, not editorial's

Well then they are a little childish - the manufacturers not the commercial team, they would only have to slink back again at a later date and that is no way to run a business.

But anyway I am kind of feeling like I being dragged behind minor misinterpretation here. I am not saying anything bad about you guys and I am not suggesting that your reviews are affected by advertising revenue, but you want to build a successful magazine, presumably the best in the industry, and therefore you have to create an environment where advertisers want to advertise and consumers want to consume. I am not sure why that is a 'wrong again' type of point.

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:
And there, bloatedgut, you have the view of the person you mentioned who sits at the point where all parts of the magazine meet.

Couldn't be much more unequivocal, could it?

Well Mr. E I assumed that Claire was that person.

And it could not be much more unequivocal, no, but I am not sure who that is directed at because you seem to think that, with Claire's point, I have somehow been told. I do not see it as the point that I was making and I have never doubted the editorial's impartiality, i.e. you seem to of misinterpreted me, if only in emphasis.

 

[Andrew Everard]

bloatedgut:...because you seem to think that, with Claire's point, I have somehow been told.

The only thing you have been told is the answer to your comment about there being a point where the two sides of the magazine meet.

Of course advertisers will be influenced by the scope of the magazine, hence the lack of ads for cosmetics or fishing rods in WHFSV, but really the compelling reason for most in the consumer electronics field to use the magazine as an advertising platform is the numbers, especially when compared to the other titles out there in the market.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Appreciate also, BloatedGut that you weren't doubting us - but these issues are best firmly clarified for the benefit of those new to the mag/Forums.

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:Of course advertisers will be influenced by the scope of the magazine, hence the lack of ads for cosmetics or fishing rods in WHFSV, but really the compelling reason for most in the consumer electronics field to use the magazine as an advertising platform is the numbers, especially when compared to the other titles out there in the market.

Fair play... but we do not have to make the ads so diverse for me to remake my point.... forget fishing rods and cosmetics. Just say that for whatever reason (Gin, severe ice-cream headache, cat dies) Claire comes into work tomorrow calls a meeting and says... 'I have decided that there is enough stereo in the world, we do not need anymore so next month we re-launch as What Secondhand Hi Fi Sound & Vision'.... how many manufacturers would pull their adverts....? (Under such circumstances would WHF survive and would Claire still be in a job at the end of it?).

Alright well that scenerio seems extreme as well.... so now change 'The Mix' of the magazine... make it so that you apportion a percentage of the magazine to secondhand... could it not be possible, in an industry where manufacturers do pull adverts because of bad reviews, that such a change in emphasis might be detrimental in a small way?

Answer from you and Claire: we do not care it is not our problem.

Great, I accept that. but at least with this post we are closer to my original point and moving away from accusations of impartiality and adverts abotu fishing rods, none of which, I feel adequately reflects what I was saying.