My regular trawl through the What Hi-Fi? archives this month sees me look back to the March 1994 edition of the magazine.
There isn’t often much rhyme or reason for me picking a particular issue – hey, every one’s a winner! – it’s usually a case of me heading down to the hi-fi testing room where our archive lives, where the bound issues and magazines serve a handy dual purpose of helping to control the acoustics in the room by absorbing and deflecting sound (by, basically, not being a hard flat surface).
This month, though, there was at least a little bit of method in my mag guess: the Bristol Hi-Fi Show (originally called Sound and Vision) has been a regular in the What Hi-Fi? diary for decades now – and the 2025 edition (the show's 36th) is being held next week (21st-23rd February). We will, as we have done for almost the entire history of the event, be there in force, with a demonstration of the latest and most impressive tech we can lay our hands on.
So, to tie in with the show, I went in search of some early references; so March ’94 it is.
A system for the systems
And, as is pretty much always the case, there are some fascinating points of reference and difference for us to delve into – Bristol Show notwithstanding.
The cover was a bit of a surprise to me. Back in the day (back in my early days, at the very least) it was traditional for the magazine that came out at the start of the year (so normally the February issue) to feature a one-make systems round-up. In 1994, though, it was the March edition that saw us go round the manufacturers to see what they could come up with as suggestions of branded products to marry together for a serious two-channel hi-fi set-up.
Perhaps the “tradition” started a year or two after this, then.
Turning the tables on CD
A separate system – a monthly regular it seems – was promoting a turntable set-up using a Thorens deck with Denon amplification and a pair of Rogers speakers. I confess to being somewhat surprised to see vinyl being pushed in this issue in more than one instance; in my mind the hi-fi world was very much in love with the compact disc, and pretty much everyone had written off the vinyl disc and turntable as a lost cause; the What Hi-Fi? team at the time could clearly see the advantages of analogue.
The second record player link was even worth a brief reference on the cover, pushing the advantages of upgrading your turntable's cartridge. In an amazing demonstration of how times have changed, inside I found a Group Test of upgrade cartridges, each one costing less than £70. Nothing terribly mind-blowing there in itself, I know, but… But there are 17 (seventeen) of them on test.
Now this is more like it
To put my mind more at ease, also in the pages was a Group Test of budget CD players (now that’s more like it, 1994). The standfirst includes the line “You can get a surprisingly good CD player for the cost of a dozen discs”, which sounds like an eminently good deal to me.
Another slight surprise to me (this, after all, was before even my time on the magazine) was the separated off, with its own internal cover, AV/home cinema section. We quite often, here on What Hi-Fi?, get people writing in or commenting, complaining that we shouldn’t be covering home cinema products, and should stick to our “core” remit. All I can say is that the brand has been covering the visual side of things for almost as long as we have been around – and certainly for a lot longer than this issue from three decades ago shows.
All roads lead to Bristol
Which brings us back to the Bristol Show. Which we have been covering for around 30 years. The feature pictured above devotes four pages to the upcoming event, with a rundown of the main runners and riders as far as brands and products available to be seen in one of the hotel rooms given over to the UK’s biggest hi-fi event. I confess, it isn’t the most inviting of layouts, but the facts are all there – and once again, it shows the difference a generation and more can make. All this information is now available online – indeed, here it is – and would be in effect dead air in a magazine of today.
So there you go: get yourself down to Bristol if you can; and if you do, come and say hello to the What Hi-Fi? team, and enjoy a 20-minute sit-down in our demo. We’d love to see you.
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