Too much though and even Bose sounds good. So a man gotta know his limitations.A couple of glasses of red with horns and SET and good music… the secret for the suspension of disbelief… the drink is apparently every bit as effective as room treatments or good power
Spot on and very well said.….
Amen to that. I have given up reading hifi rags. I find WBF far more informative and useful. I’d argue that in 2023 and beyond, forums like this one is the model for high end audio. Plenty of manufacturers advertise their wares here. Owners provide reviews. Lots of topics and opinions are presented. At this point, TAS and Stereophile are largely anachronisms of the 20th century prior to the web. In the 1980s, TAS was a very different institution and one could argue it played a useful role then when disseminating information was much more difficult. To make an analogy, TAS and Stereophile are like the equivalent of Blu Ray discs in a universe dominated with streaming channels with an infinitely more interesting repertoire of content.
A couple of glasses of red with horns and SET and good music… the secret for the suspension of disbelief… the drink is apparently every bit as effective as room treatments or good power
In the 90s we were doing a session at the then named Kaufmann Astoria Studios with Livingston Taylor. When we first got there, one side of the board was exposed to the wires. Bill Allen, the studio manager helping us, said Keith and the Stones had been there recording an album and Keith knocked over a bottle of Jack Daniels.
You must not know TAS very well. A year ago it started a YouTube channel based on a strategy Tom Martin and I came up with. It’s been very successful and has reached 13K subscribers in less than a year, much faster than many audio influencers have done. Same with the sister channel Tracking Angle approaching 15K subscribers.
I hear you. I like the new and unknown. BACCH. Horn Speakers. IO speaker. Something new. I don't want to read more Magico/Wilson love. That gear may be great. Fine. The last 3 TAS have sat next to my toilet and are hardly touched. I reach for Popular Woodworking, Boat or even Martha Stewart before the audio rags. They have really just sat there unread.
Not everyone needs to Francisco… when it comes to recall some people are better at read and recall while others are better at listening and recalling. So some of us are better (and so enjoy) reading more and others are better at listening and so instruction from video can be preferred by some. When it comes to visual perception (graphics, symbols, diagrams etc) some people like to watch… but that is a story for a different day lol.
My read/write modality simply isn’t as strong as my listening and visual perception skills… even my kinaesthetic learning is generally less challenged than my read/write function. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get better at read/write but it’s an uphill battle.
None of these modes are necessarily an inherently better way of perception but they are just different modes of perceiving and most of us have a different mix of perceptual strengths and weaknesses. So a publisher who uses both written and video communication is making their content more successfully accessible to a greater number of people.
Reading the way some people write very complex sentences can feel for me more like (assumption) giving birth to a watermelon… without the anaesthetic
Give me a good orator over a good writer any day. But better still it’s great to have access to both.
I’m glad to hear TAS is adapting with the times. I confess that I personally find TAS too monochromatic for my tastes compared to WBF. I used to greatly enjoy reading it in the 1980s. I did subscribe to the digital edition for a while but although it’s considerably more flashy than the old mostly B&W print edition, TAS under HP was considerably more fun to read.
We are at an interesting time with online magazines too many to mention; YouTubers and the large established magazines, aka Stereophile and TAS. The latter are often the subject of discussion about conflicts of interest and the value of the information presented due to commercial conflicts. I would argue all media has the same potential for conflict and that many writers there have a level of experience over a greater period of time than many smaller publications.
I read automobil and bespoke wristwatch publications but rarely ascribe much to the reviews, not because they don't have something valuable something to say, but because after years of immersion in those areas I mostly know what will or will not interest me. That said, they are an invaluable source of information and often times fun to read. In the end, isn't that what it's all about?
Thought: One reviewer whose ear I trust from following him for years is Jason Kennedy of The Ear Magazine. Get to know a reviewers' preferences, follow the ones whose observations somewhat track with your own, and then as has been said many, many times before LISTEN
To all the Dads out there Happy Father's day!
