HiFiCritic, refund if they go belly up? E-mail reply

Sounds fair enough, Dean. I think I'll join you and subscribe as well. It'll be interesting to see what sort of magazine they produce without the need to please the advertisers.

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by Chillkram:
It'll be interesting to see what sort of magazine they produce without the need to please the advertisers.

Mark

Any audio magazine that sells space to Hi Fi Companies is just writing paid advertising anyway.

Regards

BB

I think we should support this attempt at a decent mag - pay your subscription if you want it. Someone has to...

If you pay you can ask for what you want.
If the hifi companies pay for it, they get what they want.

Witness HiFi Choice crapping on about 'the best ever NAD'. Like that's saying anything. When you make utter junk the only way IS up! Can you spell 'advertising revenue'?

Perhaps with a mag like HiFiCritic a reviewer may actually get to tell the truth for once.

Yeah but fifty quid for six issues!!!

You know what they say about cheap (free) info?

It's worthless.

That's why football clubs ask the lads doon th' battlecruiser who to put in next year's squad.

Seriously - is fiddy quid really that big a deal for a mag that could really turn the industry round the right way and help a lot of people save a lot of money when buying expensive equipment?

If you walked into a dealer and they said it's 50 pounds for an interconnect, you'd hardly squeal, would you?

Yes, but, (almost) nobody here or on other similar sites is in the pay of hi-fi companies, so the opinions are unsponsored. Is it reasonable to assume that someone who writes for a hi-fi magazine has any special skills other than writing skills, er no.

quote:

Seriously - is fiddy quid really that big a deal for a mag that could really turn the industry round the right way and help a lot of people save a lot of money when buying expensive equipment?

I suspect that most serious spenders will already have some knowledge and those that don't and initially research from magazines only, will look at those mags on the shelves at Smiths as opposed to taking out a subscription to a magazine they're probably not aware of.

Most mags of a presumed calibre seem to be aimed at those who have already bought into HI-Fi as a concept. I like HiFi and music mags 'cos I like HiFi and music. While I take into account their collective opinions at a high level, I can categorically state that no journalist has influenced any HiFi (or anything else pricey be it cars/laptops whatever) purchasing decision other than in bringing items to my attention in the first place and that includes the ads (music is different because of the relative quantity and price scales of purchases). But given that I think the subscription to the best magazine at the moment (HiFi+ IMHO) is a little pricey, then this one seems even more so.

I hope it does well, I really do, 'cos I like HiFi mags (apart from the ridiculous What HiFi) but to ask for fifty quid, upfront, for a newbie seems to carry a bit of front. In value for money terms, will 6 issues give me more entertainment than about ten books a year or 7 or 8 CD's or a couple of concert tickets? Dunno.

That said, it will be interesting to see if their opinions on kit differ radically from those of the other 'supported' magazines, won't it? And if they don't, what's the point? So maybe they're bound to to differ, to justify the higher book price. But if they're different to justify being different then they're really no different at all are they? "You can't be mad Yosarian etc..."

quote:

Is it reasonable to assume that someone who writes for a hi-fi magazine has any special skills other than writing skills, er no.

Perhaps the writing skills are what sets them apart in the first instance but I would also point to the breadth of experience and opportunities to listen to gear that a reviewer like Martin Colloms has over say, you or me.

Writing skills are quite special, actually:

quote:

Yes, but, (almost) nobody here or on other similar sites is in the pay of hi-fi companies, so the opinions are unsponsored. Is it reasonable to assume that someone who writes for a hi-fi magazine has any special skills other than writing skills, er no.

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:
Writing skills are quite special, actually:

Couldn't agree more. I'm a keen reader of Ian Rankin because of his writing but he admitted that his hi-fi reviews contained no useful information.

I can say for sure that I have read many Hi Fi rags, and they do have an entertainment value for the initiated. But they have no more usefulness to me than the gear catalogues I get in the mail on occasion. They let you know what is available at any given point in time.

The only Hi Fi writer that I learned anything from, was a dude from LA named Neil Levinson. He used to write an article called ' New for Audiophiles' for the music magazine Fanfare. Fanfare accepted no advertising from audio companies, so Levinson did not pull any punches. The knowledge and wisdom of those articles has stayed with me for many years, and I've since found nothing to equal it.

Levinson got out of the Hi Fi journalism game sometime around 1990, not sure what he's done since. Had I not stumbled onto those articles some twenty years ago, I'm sure I would have no interest in hi fi gear today.

Regards

Big Brother