Practical Hi-Fi Magazine September 1979

[pcourtney]

would anyone have this copy - by chance ???

[User211]

Because it has a review of?

[Arkless Electronics]

Because it has a review of?

Same thought here.... I have hundreds of old hi fi mags but finding a specific issue or review would be a major task!

[Barry]

I probably did have a copy: I use to buy them all in those days. But a couple of so years ago, I threw out a couple of cubic metres of old hi-fi mags.

The few I have remaining are boxed up, and not easily accessible.

[walpurgis]

I was much the same. Had mountains of mags going back to early seventies. Binned 95% and have just a few now.

[Arkless Electronics]

I keep thinking about binning all mine but so far nostalgia has the best of me... Some of them are in a pile/row about a metre high and 4 long, more are in old suitcases and in piles in the back of cupboards... I could REALLY do with the space but the thought of all those reviews, technical articles and opinion pieces that took years to accumulate, and cost a pretty penny spread out over several years, just being binned... hmmm. I even have maybe a metre high pile of brochures and spec sheets from hi fi shows going back to the early 80's... Hoarder? me? :D

[cre009]

I came to a decision a few years back and dumped around half of mine and retained the rest. I did not start my interest until the late 80s so cant help Peter but I when I started I purchased most titles regularly except What HiFi which I felt was mainly advertising with limited content.

I thought about retaining New HiFi Sound because of the record reviews but Q did them better so dumped those. I also dumped my collection of HiFi Answers because I felt the content was bland. However I quite liked the Audiophile mag that HiFi Answers morphed into so should have most of those. I also kept HiFi Review and a lot of the early HiFi World when that replaced HFR. I have some HiFi News and Record Review but not sure how many I retained.

[Barry]

I came to a decision a few years back and dumped around half of mine and retained the rest. I did not start my interest until the late 80s so cant help Peter but I when I started I purchased most titles regularly except What HiFi which I felt was mainly advertising with limited content.

I thought about retaining New HiFi Sound because of the record reviews but Q did them better so dumped those. I also dumped my collection of HiFi Answers because I felt the content was bland. However I quite liked the Audiophile mag that HiFi Answers morphed into so should have most of those. I also kept HiFi Review and a lot of the early HiFi World when that replaced HFR. I have some HiFi News and Record Review but not sure how many I retained.

'Hi Fi World', 'Hi Fi Review' and the excreable 'The Flat Respose', were a total waste of paper and nothing more than an organ of the arch Flat Earther. propagandist.

[Arkless Electronics]

'Hi Fi World', 'Hi Fi Review' and the excreable 'The Flat Respose', were a total waste of paper and nothing more than an organ of the arch Flat Earther. propagandist.

I have one issue of "The Flat response" and yes it is laughable! I liked "Hi Fi World" though... a good mix of technical, DIY and reviews IMHO... and there is an amp designed by my good self on the front cover of the Nov '95 issue :D

[mikeyb]

An onerous task but it would be a good archive to have them scanned and saved.

[Spectral Morn]

I binned What HiFi, HiFi Sound, HiFi Choice, HiFi World, most Audiophiles, but kept all my Stereophiles , HiFi Answers, Absolute Sound, HiFi News and HiFi +. Got rid of all the AV magazines, a sizeable bundle.

I regret getting rid of the Audiophiles but I barely had the space. It gets worse as I continue buying but I don't these days by all. HiFi + isn't always worth the price of admission - I miss the Roy Gregory period as imperfect as that was but, + then was an exciting read. News is better than it was, but sadly it reflects the same companies portfolios each month, so is getting a bit stale.

I prefer physical mags to read rather than online.

[Marco]

What about Hi-Fi for Pleasure, with front covers regularly adorned with scantily-clad girlies - remember? That was always good for a giggle! :eyebrows:

Marco.

[walpurgis]

What about Hi-Fi for Pleasure?

Marco.

They occasionally offered 'super quality' LP's. I have a couple, they're pretty good actually.

[Macca]

'Hi Fi World', 'Hi Fi Review' and the excreable 'The Flat Respose', were a total waste of paper and nothing more than an organ of the arch Flat Earther. propagandist.

Hi-Fi World was never Flat Earth - it was valves and DIY from the start. Linn was rarely reviewed and when it was it did not get good reviews, Naim likewise.

Hi-Fi review I have some old issues of (the last 4 I think) and it was nothing like as bad as people claim to remember it being.

[Macca]

I have one issue of "The Flat response" and yes it is laughable! I liked "Hi Fi World" though... a good mix of technical, DIY and reviews IMHO... and there is an amp designed by my good self on the front cover of the Nov '95 issue :D

Got that issue, will have to dig it out and see what they say about it.

[Marco]

Hi-Fi World was never Flat Earth - it was valves and DIY from the start. Linn was rarely reviewed and when it was it did not get good reviews, Naim likewise.


Yeah Bazza, you've got that one wrong. David Price (the editor for many years) always championed quality Jap gear and kit from small, specialist manufacturers - he certainly wasn't a Linn or Naim fanboy :nono:

Marco.

[Marco]

They occasionally offered 'super quality' LP's. I have a couple, they're pretty good actually.

It was before my time, but have seen some of the front covers since, from Hi-Fi for Pleasure, which doubled almost as 'soft porn'... :eyebrows: I just loved how '70s' it was in its attitude, and how a 'pretty little filly' was always somehow considered necessary to get the message across, with adverts such as this:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/924/cVga86.jpg

*SO* funny!! :lol:

I seem to remember, during the late 80s and 90s, that a well-known UK hi-fi dealer (forget which one now) would place adverts in the back of all the magazines, showing pics of his (much younger) wife or girlfriend wearing stockings and suspenders, 'tastefully draped' over a pair of speakers, or whatever, which I also used to giggle at. The mentality was simply bizarre!

Does anyone else remember that, and if so, who it was?

Marco.

[walpurgis]

Yeah Bazza, you've got that one wrong. David Price (the editor for many years) always championed quality Jap gear and kit from small, specialist manufacturers - he certainly wasn't a Linn or Naim fanboy :nono:

Marco.

He is a member here is he not Marco?

[Marco]

Yes, but hasn't been on for some time. I get on well with David :)

Marco.

[Arkless Electronics]

Got that issue, will have to dig it out and see what they say about it.

They liked it. I wasn't so keen on it (Alchemist Axiom). I consider it my worst effort.... yet it's by far the biggest seller! I wanted to do a complete but quick redesign and basically replace the innards with totally different circuitry but the partners in Alchemist decided it was more than good enough to be their entry level integrated.

It was a rather "outré" design which i later thought was just too off the beaten track to work well as a budget product. By the time I'd decided that within the tight parts budget I had, a more conventional topology would be both cheaper and better they had decided to run with it as it was...

[Arkless Electronics]

I see the op hasn't been back since starting the thread.... :scratch:

[Barry]

Hi-Fi World was never Flat Earth - it was valves and DIY from the start. Linn was rarely reviewed and when it was it did not get good reviews, Naim likewise.

Hi-Fi review I have some old issues of (the last 4 I think) and it was nothing like as bad as people claim to remember it being.

Oops - what was I thinking of? :doh:

By only excuse is confusion with Hi Fi Review; thinking that 'World' had morphed into 'Review'.

And yes you are right, HFW is a good magazine, which I continue to buy on occasion. I like the reviews of unusual items of kit, but I don't agree with some of their opinions of 'classical' gear and I miss the days when it used to encourage DIY and the use of vintage items.

But I do stand by my opinion of the defunct 'The Flat Response' and it's successor 'Hi Fi Review'. Both miserable little rags, that seemed to be nothing more than propaganda for the Glasgow-Salisbury axis.

[Arkless Electronics]

Oops - what was I thinking of? :doh:

By only excuse is confusion with Hi Fi Review; thinking that 'World' had morphed into 'Review'.

And yes you are right, HFW is a good magazine, which I continue to buy on occasion. I like the reviews of unusual items of kit, but I don't agree with some of their opinions of 'classical' gear and I miss the days when it used to encourage DIY and the use of vintage items.

But I do stand by my opinion of the defunct 'The Flat Response' and it's successor 'Hi Fi Review'. Both miserable little rags, that seemed to be nothing more than propaganda for the Glasgow-Salisbury axis.

I well remember HFW giving a rave review to the Leak Troughline tuner and claiming it was the best tuner ever built by a country mile... values (temporarily) went from around £20 to £350 virtually overnight! It probably had something to do with the vast quantities of them most hi fi dealers had in the basement as door stops and paper weights... Some must have made a killing! Vastly over rated and completely trounced by Leak's later Stereofetic/Delta FM which still goes for like £35 or so...
And now I have over the years accumulated about a dozen Troughlines no one wants one... oh well they do hold a door open pretty well:D I can see me ending up scrapping some for the mains transformers and valve bases etc for building prototype pre amps etc.

[RothwellAudio]

My issue with Hi-Fi World was that they produced their own gear which their own reviewers would rave about. They ran multi-page adverts for their own gear which would have cost any other advertiser a considerable sum of money. Many of the products they reviewed would have been in competition with their own products, resulting in a conflict of interests. Their own products were not available through any other retailers and no other magazines reviewed their products.

Apart from the conflict of interests angle, I was never impressed by the technical measurements. Measurements were made and bold claims about how the product "would" sound were made based on those measurements. Frequently their own reviewer's subjective evaluation would be at odds with the measurement-based predictions.

[Barry]

My issue with Hi-Fi World was that they produced their own gear which their own reviewers would rave about. They ran multi-page adverts for their own gear which would have cost any other advertiser a considerable sum of money. Many of the products they reviewed would have been in competition with their own products, resulting in a conflict of interests. Their own products were not available through any other retailers and no other magazines reviewed their products.

Apart from the conflict of interests angle, I was never impressed by the technical measurements. Measurements were made and bold claims about how the product "would" sound were made based on those measurements. Frequently their own reviewer's subjective evaluation would be at odds with the measurement-based predictions.

I take their measurements with a pinch of salt - I'm much more interested in their views on how an item sounds.

[Arkless Electronics]

My issue with Hi-Fi World was that they produced their own gear which their own reviewers would rave about. They ran multi-page adverts for their own gear which would have cost any other advertiser a considerable sum of money. Many of the products they reviewed would have been in competition with their own products, resulting in a conflict of interests. Their own products were not available through any other retailers and no other magazines reviewed their products.

Apart from the conflict of interests angle, I was never impressed by the technical measurements. Measurements were made and bold claims about how the product "would" sound were made based on those measurements. Frequently their own reviewer's subjective evaluation would be at odds with the measurement-based predictions.

Whilst I hadn't really thought of it that way I guess you are right about the WAD products. There was even (still is?) a forum for users of it!

I don't agree on the measurements though as when they reviewed the Axiom I recall thinking that the measurements and technical comments were spot on and proof that they really had done the tests etc.

[RothwellAudio]

I don't agree on the measurements though...
It's not the accuracy of the measurements I had an issue with, more the interpretation of them and the conclusions drawn.

[Macca]

yes, the conclusions were sometimes dodgy, or a little cavalier - some Celestion speakers I owned were measured and they concluded that a 50 watt amp 'would be fine'

Yes, a 50 watt amp that was happy with a load dropping down to 2 ohm, never bloody mentioned that!

[Chris]

IMHO the best was "Answers" - I still listen to LPs recommended by Fred Dellar such as Love Wars by Womack and Womack. I also used to enjoy John Atkinson´s exploits using photographers´developing dishes as light and rigid supports under his Linn.

[Barry]

Hi Fi Answers was the first of the magazines to fall for, and promulgate the Flat Earth mythology.

[Marco]

I take their measurements with a pinch of salt - I'm much more interested in their views on how an item sounds.

Same here. I don't (didn't, as I no longer do) buy hi-fi magazines to read about boring measurements or look at graphs that mean absolutely nothing to me. I'm not a builder or technically minded. I bought them to read the subjective listening experiences of the reviewers.

At least HFW championed products from many small manufacturers and looked at the bigger picture in the hi-fi industry, rather than at that time pander to the interests of the, as you refer to it, 'Linn/Naim axis'.

As far as I'm concerned therefore, HFW were one of 'the good guys', and from speaking with and having met the editor, David Price, know that he's a genuine person and first and foremost a true hi-fi and music enthusiast, the same of which most certainly can't be said for some of the others! ;)

Marco.

[Chris]

Hi Fi Answers was the first of the magazines to fall for, and promulgate the Flat Earth mythology. don't think Keith Howard or John Atkinson could be considered flat-earthers. Linnies maybe.

[struth]

I just looked at the pictures :D

[danilo]

don't think Keith Howard or John Atkinson could be considered flat-earthers. Linnies maybe.

Hmmm... In my dim past I bought two items/gear based on J.A's (stereopiles'; "rave reviews/recomendations" thereby discovering he was an imposter.
Really pissed (at myself.. mostly) in that he Fooled me ...on TWO .. instances into buying his recommended 'Gear' which very quickly revealed itself as being genuinely inferior.
Performing Nothing like 'His' reviews/analysis claimed.
Caveat Emptor Kids... there IS earned reason that the few surviving Hi-Fi mags are hanging on by their advert dept's willpower alone.

[Beobloke]

At a slight tangent, but on the subject of old magazines, if anyone has any copies of New Hi-Fi Sound from 1987-89 that they'd like to dispose of, please drop me a line!

[Martyn Miles]

I have a copy of HFN from August 1978.
It's one of the most interesting copies I've seen, as it has a review of five
MC cartridges:

Sony XL-55
Technics EPC-300
Entre 1
Coral 777 EX
Ortofon MC 20

Absolutely fascinating.

I bought an Entre 1 in 1979 for £85 and still own it.
Expert Pickups have fitted many new styli over the years and
Wyndham Hodgson ( Expert Pickups Prop. ) told me it's still one of
his favourite cartridges.

[Pete The Cat]

I bought Hi-Fi Answers religiously in the late 70s when I couldn't afford the kit but wanted to dream. I bought a stack from the 80s a while back and my bedtime reading is up to 1985 now.

I still have a Practical Hi-Fi cartridge alignment protractor and screwdriver from that period.

If I need something for a long train journey I'll give Hi-Fi World a go.

Pete

[farflungstar]

I also bought them religiously until I put together my dream system and never bought one again.

[hifi_dave]

If I need something for a long train journey I'll give Hi-Fi World a go.

Pete
Unless it's a very short journey, you might need several of them because it never takes me more than ten minutes to read.

[Macca]

I stopped buying them when it all became DACs, streamers and multi-channel. once you skipped all that guff there was about 6 pages worth reading. For four quid a pop? No thanks.

[hifi_dave]

Cheap wireless speakers, portable digital devices and pages of vintage equipment. Not much to hold my attention. Hi-Fi News keeps me entertained for far longer, though I do skip the telephone numbers gear.

[Arkless Electronics]

I stopped buying them when it all became DACs, streamers and multi-channel. once you skipped all that guff there was about 6 pages worth reading. For four quid a pop? No thanks.

About the same here...