David Price leaving World?

[MartinT]

Are you lot all on the funny stuff

[Reid Malenfant]

Are you lot all on the funny stuff

Wassat Martin? Funny stuff

I can assure you that no Ronnie Corbett videos have been watched here this evening

[MartinT]

For a minute there, Mark, things were getting surreal. Fork 'andles...

[Marco]

Sorry Marco I've ben out of the loop for a while, all work and no play makes Jack inclinded to wander a little.

Now will Mr. Price cope with HFN work ethic or will the gimp ball prove too much

Either way should prove most illuminating

No where did I put my Robin Hood outfit............ Oh yes proping up my new deck, a nice man told me about cartridge break in time felt it would be best if I did the above...

How are you then Marco

I'm fine and dandy, matey... How are you? I hope business is good since you've moved to new premises

I'm sure DP won't mind he has broad shoulders, after all he's put up with NK for over 10 years, surely he deserves a bloody knighthood for that dedication to the duty!

Aye, how true is that!!

What new deck have you got then, Tony?

Marco.

[Alan Sircom]

Hi Alan and thanks for the reply. I assure the comments I made were not directed at you personally and are based on my own thoughts and conversations had with others. Now you could call that chinese whispers, but I remember a certain someone who went to work for a large cable maker, a good while after his wife started working for the distributer of that company (?). Looking back over his reviews, there was an overbearing presence of said manufacturer despite the cable not being the subject of the reveiw! I call that despicable, and while I may be persuaded that this was an isolated incident, you cannot deny that revenue from advertisers would soon dry up if there were more honest, and if needed negative product reviews and this in itself must lead to products being reviewed with rose tinted spectacles. One instance in particular I remember concerns a manufacturer of shoe box sized components as well as speakers who advertise very heavily in one mag and as far as I can recall have never had a negative review of their kit in said mag. I personally prefer to hear kit if I can before taking the plunge, or if not I would value the judgement of people like Neil, who i have met and trust. As mentioned it was nothing personal and I hope I did not cause offense.

Roy's enthusiasm for 'coherent cable looms' and research into similar technologies has long been one of his USPs as a reviewer, and those enthusiasms carried over into his tenure as editor. Having got a complete set of Hi-Fi+ as part of the job, it's pretty clear where his enthusiasms lie, because two of the first five covers have cables on them.

Roy publicly recused himself from covering Nordost cables when his wife started working (temporarily) for the company. After she stopped working for the company, he started reviewing Nordost products once more. Unfortunately, in making these statements in public, those who see perfidy in everything had a target. Roy resigned his editorship in 2009. I believe his initial role was to work with Al Stiefel on Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and returning to his first love of reviewing, without the endless politics incumbent to editing a magazine. However, Al died suddenly not long after I'd taken over the magazine and Roy spent a couple of months with that 'what have I done?' look before he started working for Nordost. I highlighted the situation in an editorial in the magazine, and consider the matter closed. Unfortunately, history is easy to revise and distort.

My take on all this is Roy's enthusiasm for a foundational approach to audio leaves him exposed to criticism on many sides. The criticism is self-sealing, self-raising and highly contagious. No-one is whiter than white and even the most morally upstanding of us will look dodgy under the forensic gaze of the obsessive-compulsive. And let's face it, audio has more than its fill of obsessives.

If I thought Roy was on the take, he wouldn't be a reviewer for Hi-FI+ anymore. Ironically, because of his role with Nordost, he can no longer cover the products I think he did best - not just Nordost reviews, but his viewpoint on that whole foundational approach that separates the great from the merely good. If he ever decided to sever his connection with Nordost, I would potentially welcome his return to looking over such products again. In truth, I'm not sure he would ever be able to fully shake off his Nordost connection, but again that is would be down to public perception rather than any actual nefarious actions on his behalf.

If you look back at a body of reviews, you are going to see the same names coming up time and again, because people like to set the equipment in context, and because will use products we like in our systems. I remember the Flat Earth days when many reviews were written by people who used Linn turntables, Naim amplifiers and either Linn or Naim loudspeakers. Every review from those writers had a paragraph that began with something like, "I inserted the product into my system, comprising..." and the result was a magazine that had the word 'Naim' printed hundreds of time per issue. The people writing the magazine were (are) sincere in their enjoyment of Linn/Naim equipment and their enthusiasm for the Linn/Naim systems bubbled over in print, but just by listing the products over and over again made it seem 'bent'. It's one of the reasons why I don't tend to list the products in my system unless there are specific compatibility issues that call for a list of products.

Advertising does not buy good reviews. Advertising buys visibility and on an editorial perspective at best buys more of a chance to be put up for a review. The proliferation of brands and products at this time mean we have thousands of products vying for one of maybe 150 review slots per year, so that 'more of a chance' becomes significant.

This doesn't mean advertisers are protected or that non-advertisers are open to bad reviews. A product is given the same treatment, no matter where it comes from. Our lead time for reviews is generally long because I give the reviewer the chance to find out if they dislike the product, and whether that dislike is a clash of tastes (in which case, another reviewer might find the product more acceptable) or whether it's intrinsic to the product (as in, it's a bad product). If it's the latter, we end up sending it back. And yes, products - including products from major advertisers - do go back unreviewed, although I will not be drawn on what they are.

I'd prefer more of a dynamic range to reviews, making public those few bad reviews than simply sending the products back. That's what magazines used to do, and what I used to do when I first started reviewing. But, following a combination of the 1994 Yachting World vs. Walker Wingsail Systems libel case and a substantial out-of-court settlement within the industry itself in the same decade, even constructive criticism runs the risk of a magazine running up hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of legal fees and an open ended settlement if it goes against the mag (the Yachting World pay-out was in the millions). I have no desire to publish a review of a bad product, only to end up funding that company to continue to provide bad products thanks to draining the coffers of the magazine, so I reserve the right to decline to review that product.

[AndrewR]

I have no desire to publish a review of a bad product, only to end up funding that company to continue to provide bad products thanks to draining the coffers of the magazine, so I reserve the right to decline to review that product.

That's fair enough. I take the view that most readers do not necessarily benefit from reviews about bad-performing equipment anyway. It just wastes the reader's time.

Better to spend time reading about what is "good".

Also badly perceived sound quality could be due to a variety of reasons, including partnering equipment with opposing strengths and weaknesses. ....Accidentally reviewing a CD player with great sound-staging and poor timing in a system with great timing and poor sound-staging would produce an unfair result cancelling out the strengths of each.

Then there is the subjective side. What good is it for a reviewer to "roast" a product that does not meet their subjective criteria, if it would put-off many others from enjoying it. It does not do the customer, manufacturer or industry any good.

Andrew