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What Hifi BS

Putter

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At the risk of being sexist, another dumb blonde. However, her qualifications are no worse than any other audio reviewer found in this type of magazine, which is typically no more than an interest in high end audio equipment and the sense to realize that the best way to get it is to write reviews of the equipment. At least she appears to be physically fit and young enough to have decent hearing although if she keeps wearing iem's at work she'll likely soon lose her high frequency hearing.
 

threni

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Robin L

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What editor thought it was a good idea to publish that article? It just makes What-Fi look foolish and unreliable from an objectivist standpoint, while likely doing little to promote their brand among audio fools.
Clicks, I guess. It got us talking', right?
 

Ron Party

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Surely you know that 84.7% of all quoted statistics are made up?

I asked my friend Google to do a search and, sure enough, results revealed polls with ranges from 20 to 25 percent of the people answering that the sun revolves around the earth. And here I thought it revolved around me.
 

Ron Texas

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Malarky de jour... The only thing I find that makes the music sound better and more involving is a good bowl of Canadian weed. >@^_*@<
You need to try the Rocky Mountain HIgh, LOL.
 

Mnyb

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At the risk of being sexist, another dumb blonde. However, her qualifications are no worse than any other audio reviewer found in this type of magazine, which is typically no more than an interest in high end audio equipment and the sense to realize that the best way to get it is to write reviews of the equipment. At least she appears to be physically fit and young enough to have decent hearing although if she keeps wearing iem's at work she'll likely soon lose her high frequency hearing.

I think it’s sexist but in the opposite way , a hifi nerd that is female and do not have one foot in the grave already :D
Is sure to stir the subset of aging boomers that are interested in hifi . What Hifi has clearly stereotyped hifi enthusiast and tries to rub them the rigth way ... or some way .

Similar to all those “elevator jazz” ladies that for some reason must record all the standards again looking beautiful on the record cover hmm
 

MattHooper

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I find most of the British hi-fi mags, especially What-Hi-fi, to be the least readable (for me) of the subjective rags. The abstraction gets so remote to the old PRAT to the "eagerness" of the speake to please, etc. It's barely even an attempt to describe the sound, and even more about the emotional effects the particular reviewer had in listening, with lots of anthropomorphizing along the way. For me it's mostly trash as reading. (And I'm someone who actually does enjoy and get something from some subjective reviews).
 

Robin L

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That's only helpful to them if they don't want to encourage objectivists to read their reviews.
I really don't think objectivists are a meaningful demo in the land of audiophilus nervosa. What-Hi-Fi has always been more of an industry shill than anything else, so what else is new?
 

raistlin65

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I really don't think objectivists are a meaningful demo in the land of audiophilus nervosa. What-Hi-Fi has always been more of an industry shill than anything else, so what else is new?

Well, having been involved in website design and marketing in my career, I can tell you it's not a good idea to needlessly further alienate a demographic who even only occasionally might visit your website. Everything counts in the long run. It's not he who has the most clicks today that wins. It's he who has the most clicks in the future.
 

xr100

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it's not a good idea to needlessly further alienate a demographic who even only occasionally might visit your website. Everything counts in the long run. It's not he who has the most clicks today that wins. It's he who has the most clicks in the future.

"We" aren't their audience. Their audience does not want to pour over AP plots and read about the virtues of double-blind tests. And "we" aren't their customers, either.

I don't agree with the ethics of it, but that's what "What Hi-Fi?" has been like from day one, and it's been going for over 40 years now...
 

xr100

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I find most of the British hi-fi mags, especially What-Hi-fi, to be the least readable (for me) of the subjective rags. The abstraction gets so remote to the old PRAT to the "eagerness" of the speake to please, etc. It's barely even an attempt to describe the sound, and even more about the emotional effects the particular reviewer had in listening, with lots of anthropomorphizing along the way. For me it's mostly trash as reading. (And I'm someone who actually does enjoy and get something from some subjective reviews).

Ah, this is exactly what I was talking about in the "Aitkinson" thread!

Anthropomorphising? "A very capable performer..."

Here's a particularly good example of twaddle (from 1994.) At least it has measurements, so I kept it.

ASR42.png


ASR43.png


Hours of mirth may be derived from reading it. Enjoy the above selection...
 

raistlin65

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"We" aren't their audience. Their audience does not want to pour over AP plots and read about the virtues of double-blind tests. And "we" aren't their customers, either.

I don't agree with the ethics of it, but that's what "What Hi-Fi?" has been like from day one, and it's been going for over 40 years now...

What-Fi today is not an audiophile publication. It's a general audio consumer publication with a subjectivist bias. If it was stictly those people who saw themselves as audiophiles in the subjectivist sense, the reviews would be much longer.

And objectivists are not all as you have described. There are many of us who read subjectivist reviews, not just graphs and plots. Objectivism is like Catholicism. Sure, there are the priests and the strict adherents who only read their Bible and follow the Word of audio science. And then there's everyone else who sometimes/often breaks the commandments. Some go through temporary periods where they are lapsed. There are those who are young and who haven't completed their catechism and don't quite understand it all yet. Heck, there are even many who like to read porn. lol

Regardless of where someone falls on that spectrum, there's so much nonesense in that piece, that it's bound to negatively effect how someone perceives What-Fi in a way that their heavily subjective reviews might not. And so they do risk alienating readers.
 
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xr100

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And objectivists are not all as you have described. There are many of us who read subjectivist reviews, not just graphs and plots.

I don't read "subjectivist" reviews much anymore. But I'm not really a "hardcore" sceptic type either.

I just had to check the spelling of "sceptic" and I used a Google search to do so, and interestingly the dictionary definition provided was thus:

"an ancient or modern philosopher who denies the possibility of knowledge, or even rational belief, in some sphere."

Heck, there are even many who like to read porn. lol

LOL, how utterly tedious.

Regardless of where someone falls on that spectrum, there's so much nonesense in that piece, that it's bound to negatively effect how someone perceives What-Fi in a way that their heavily subjective reviews might not. And so they do risk alienating readers.

Actually, embarrassingly, I didn't read the piece. It started with some nonsense about "running in" and that's where I closed the tab. So, consider my previous post "struck from the record," for now, on that basis.
 

raistlin65

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xr100

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You should read it all. It's awful. Someone doesn't even have to understand much about audio science to go "WTF???"

Some of it it is stuff that "What Hi-Fi?" droned on about when I did read it "back in the day." It might be aimed at a broad audience, but it's always been "tweako."

"In the dark" listening I think is fine for an area to explore further, even if the Poppy Crum quote is out of context.

The last item is OK--pointing out AVR "all channels driven" performance. (Albeit "What Hi-Fi?" never bothers even to perform power output tests, so...)

I do, however, agree with you in relation to some items. Particularly "play CD's from the start." At least someone might believe that speaker cable risers do something for some pseudo-scientific reason or other... but that's just plainly absurd and off-putting.

And you may have a point that what worked as a printed periodical won't necessarily work on the web. I suspect it's a case of a journalist unthinkingly recycling the same old material, for the most part, though.

Mind you, the following is a blog post by the former editor of "What Hi-Fi?":

https://andreweverard.com/2019/01/16/the-cat6-sat-on-the-mat/

It's about putting a network switch on top of damping material. Yes, really. I suppose if a veil isn't lifted, then a switch certainly is! (OK, bad joke.)


LOWE that!

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

:)
 
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