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Cumminspuller
01-19-2004, 06:41 PM
What are your thoughts and opinions on the best Audio/Video/HT magazine. From the impression I get here most or all never or rarely say a particular item is bad or just junk. They all come away with favorable reviews.

Jason

manek
01-20-2004, 12:32 AM
Take whatever is written in any mag with a pinch of salt. Most of them are in league with the manufacturers. Its a cycle.

What Hifi & Stereophile may be better off than the others but I have my doubts.

Whilst auditioning a speaker/system I always take a review along with me if I find one and try and pin-point the good and bad points mentioned. Most of the times they are only 50% correct for the good and the bad.

Keith from Canada
01-20-2004, 08:17 AM
What are your thoughts and opinions on the best Audio/Video/HT magazine. From the impression I get here most or all never or rarely say a particular item is bad or just junk. They all come away with favorable reviews.

Manek is correct that you should take all of the HT magazines out their with a grain of salt. First, all of the magazines live off of advertising dollars from the very companies that they review and second, lawsuits could be a problem if they are not careful.

In terms of off the shelf, found at your local corner store mags, I am partial to Home Theater magazine over the equally abundant Sound and Vision magazine. True, both of these mags rarely (if ever) knock a bad product however, Home Theater allows you to read between the lines with their rating system. You know that if most products rate in the low 80's in terms of overall performance and the product you are looking at scores an 88, that this is a good product (generally speaking). If the product you are looking at scores a 79, that's Home Theater's way of telling you to avoid that product. Plus, the "In the Labs" section offers people with some working knowledge of the product to get some inside information that the reviewer does not mention when writing the article.

topspeed
01-20-2004, 01:17 PM
I've read/received far better info from contributors here and at other sites than in any magazine. No joke. At least on the forums you (usually) get straight talk, especially once you learn certain members tendencies.

That said, I used to like Audio when it was published (apparently I was the only one :)) and now I'll pick up TAS or TPV every once in a while, although I must admit that TPV is usually above my head. What can I say, I'm an audio guy. You can chat with alot of the writers for Stereophile and whatnot at Audiogon and AudioAsylum if that's your bag.

As other's mentioned, take everthing in stride. Expose yourself to as much as you can and form your own opinions. After all, it's your money and therefore yours is the only opinion that matters.

Woochifer
01-20-2004, 03:15 PM
They all have something to offer in terms of introducing you to a product and letting a consumer know what's out there, and potentially what to try out. But, I would never let a magazine review, or any secondary information source for that matter, make the decision for me. It's all part of the due diligence process. Personally, I think that S&V's articles are mostly fluff pieces, but their lab measurements are useful, as are Stereophile's. But, on the whole, you don't really get a lot of reviews that will say anything overly negative, so you do have to read between the lines.

Lately, I've been gravitating towards The Absolute Sound because they have a lot of information about the various multichannel music formats and have begun reviewing products that address room acoustics (IMO, a much more worthwhile use of space than another endless drone about the virtue of megapriced cables). Some of their reviewers are very solid, and will identify shortcomings in a product if they identify them. Also, TAS has brought in a solid stable of contributors for their music reviews -- people who can not only evaluate the sound quality of a disc, but say something knowledgeable about the music itself and the release history for a particular album (for example, Gary Giddins contributes jazz reviews, and he also happens to be an accomplished jazz scholar and music professor). Robert Harley used to head up Audio, and then Fi magazines, and the new editorial direction of TAS is similar to those two magazines, which fills a void above the mass market stuff that S&V reviews and the more two-channel bias that Stereophile embraces..

For the more technical stuff about HDTV, Widescreen Review does some very in-depth articles, including an excellent overview of the Digital Video Essentials calibration disc.

RGA
01-20-2004, 05:51 PM
Some magazines do keep you informed on the trends which if you're interested can be good reads.

You simply have to listen in the end because even the magazines that I like and respect I don't necessarily agree with them.

I like Hi-fi Choice which is very difficult to find in North America if at all because they give a fair amount of measurement discussion, a fairly lengthy review, listen in a panel of listeners and blind so they don't have British bias or name recognition bias...they also evaluate it aesthetically and the ergonomics of the units. And they're not afraid to rip a product to shreds.

Examples:
http://www.hifichoice.co.uk/review_list.asp?category=AMP&subcategory=MULTI&Scrollaction=2

Widowmaker
01-21-2004, 07:48 AM
I subscribe to S&V and I've noticed that they are loathe to strongly criticize any product in their reviews. Also some of the reviewers come across as arrogant and pompous when they constantly mention their own equipment and how superior it is to whatever they are reviewing.

topspeed
01-21-2004, 10:01 AM
I never realized RH used to head Audio. No wonder I prefer TAS to Stereophile. Thanks for the heads-up.

Woochifer
01-21-2004, 12:52 PM
I subscribe to S&V and I've noticed that they are loathe to strongly criticize any product in their reviews. Also some of the reviewers come across as arrogant and pompous when they constantly mention their own equipment and how superior it is to whatever they are reviewing.

S&V did do a negative review of the Marantz SR-7200 a couple of years ago, which was shocking considering how they generally walk on eggshells when mentioning anything negative about a product. Apparently, that model had a design defect that Marantz would later fix, but that didn't stop them from pulling their advertising in protest.

Generally, I like David Ranada's test bench reports, they are very useful for reality checking the claims made by the various manufacturers (especially the unregulated claims made by multichannel receiver makers). On the other hand, I think that their writers in general (Ken Pohlmann especially) fall into the same trap that you find in the high tech press as well -- they go totally gaga over features and gadgets, but make no effort to differentiate between the ones that make a bottomline difference in performance versus those that are nice convenience features versus those features that are basically useless to the average consumer.

Those writers mention their own equipment because they believe in the need for a reference system. It's good to have a basis of comparison. On the other hand, it can also put the blinders on in the sense that now every piece of equipment has to sound similar to that reference system, otherwise it's less than adequate. And I've heard enough high end systems to know that not all of them produce the type of sound that I would want on an everyday basis.