You don’t need to have been particularly sharp of eye to have noticed a significant change at the top of new reviews on whathifi.com. We have had a bit of a shake up on the byline front.
For many years, What Hi-Fi? has not had bylines on its reviews. Or rather, the byline simply said “What Hi-Fi?”. This was partly because our reviewing process is such that at least two, very often more, people are involved in the testing of each piece of equipment that passes through our test rooms.
Now that What Hi-Fi? is primarily an online institution (although I am, of course, very happy to say that the magazine continues to go strong), we have a duty, we feel, to get our content out to as many people as possible. And the search algorithms, it seems, really rather like names to be put next to reviews.
What we can’t do, however, is compromise our tried and trusted testing methods. Which is why, as well as a main byline, there is also a “contributions from” name, or names, sitting alongside. It is, for obvious reasons, extremely important to us that the way we test – with the checks and balances that come with reviewing as a group rather than an individual – stays the same. We are the most trusted home entertainment reviewing brand in the world, after all.
It was all rather black and white
That outward-facing change made my choice of era for the latest Back Issues column a bit of a no-brainer. Because the way we test hasn’t always been the same; and a look back at our January 1984 issue shows that our star-rating system hasn’t always been a given for What Hi-Fi? either.
One of the more obvious differences between now and 41 years ago is the rather monochrome feel of the magazine from January ‘84. Where now we take colour imagery totally for granted, back then colour was pretty much restricted to the cover and the display advertisements. It is a rather jarring contrast and a sobering reminder how quickly we forget how things used to be, with our often rather too rose-tinted lenses.
Reely saying something – or an old spin on things?
The basic premise of the brand, of course, remains the same though. And in January 1984, we asked whether the cassette had caught up vinyl as far as sound quality was concerned. To which end, reviewer Jimmy Hughes (a self-confessed vinyl fan) pitted a new AR turntable fitted with an Audio Technica AT-31E cartridge, against a rather fancy Dual C844 cassette deck. (And no; it hadn’t.)
Ask and you shall receive
Also on test back in 1984 was a group of six receivers – amplifiers with radio tuners incorporated into them. Reviewer Alvin Gold questioned why such a combination was not more popular – and a glance at his verdict on the Marantz SR-320L test winner does make one wonder.
Square deal or five-star sparkle?
But hold on: what’s this? Take a glance at the bottom of that Marantz review. Construction: four squares; Ease of use: four squares; Sound quality: three squares; Value for money: four squares.
Squares? And out of four?!? What’s all that about? Time playing funny tricks again. What Hi-Fi?’s industry-standard five-star rating was, it seems, not always thus. Over the years, we have tweaked various settings in an attempt to make things easier to digest for the reader. The regular red stars were replaced by golden alternatives for a Supertest winner, for example. But marks out of five have been the norm for most of What Hi-Fi?’s lifetime (we’re 50 next year).
In the end it's all about the music
Also of interest to me, and to show how things were ever thus, was the software review page in 1984. Some cracking artists on show there, including Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Eurythmics (I well remember buying the cassette of Sweet Dreams when it came out; I bought it alongside a The Belle Stars album, as I recall – although I probably ought not to admit that.)
And, of course, while we are very much first and foremost a hardware reviewing title, there isn’t much point in buying any of this equipment if music and movies weren’t the ultimate point of it all. So there is still a place in What Hi-Fi? and on whathifi.com for our favourite test tracks and the like.
In the end, whatever the final rating, and whoever has done the reviewing, the important thing is that What Hi-Fi? remains the trusted and loved brand it has become in the almost 50 years of its existence; and that, I assure you, is what the wonderful team of excellent people I work with here on the brand are striving to maintain.
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