Best magazine for unbiased reviews of speakers...

Best magazine for unbiased reviews of speakers

  • What Hifi

    Votes: 13 68.4%
  • The Stereophile

    Votes: 6 31.6%
  • AV Max

    Votes: 4 21.1%
  • Hifi Choice

    Votes: 2 10.5%
  • The Absolute Sound

    Votes: 2 10.5%

  • Total voters
    19
None :D After being addicted to mags for almost a decade.
Listen to your ears. If inexperienced, listen to an experienced audiophile who has assembled a system which you aspire for.

Out of the Mags you listed, the absolute sound is slightly better than the others INMHO. Stereophile measurements are good. But measurements tell you only half the story. No guarantee here.
 
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None :D After being addicted to mags for almost a decade.
Listen to your ears. If inexperienced, listen to an experienced audiophile who has assembled a system which you aspire for.

Out of the Mags you listed, the absolute sound is slightly better than the others INMHO. Stereophile measurements are good. But measurements tell you only half the story. No guarantee here.

+1 to that.

The poll title should suggest what magazines are most biased IMHO :cool:
 
Hi Trinanjan,

I would say exactly what sq_wave has said above, including his comments on Stereophile and Absolute Sound.

I get What hifi and AV Max at home, but this is more for information on what's available out there and addresses, contacts of Indian dealers. Now that I am reasonably active in Highfivision and most of the information (actually a lot more) is already available here and on top of that I get the views of so many forum members, there is actually no reason for me to continue with these mags any more.

Regards.
 
all magazines have their own little biases.....stereophile exceptionally so...... while i don't regard the quality of What hi fi's reviews, i think the fact that their editors come on their forums and answer questions and so on, is a good sign, at the end of the day all these reviews are just one or the other subjective opinion on a component. They are most usual for the factual, semi-factual aspects such as whether a speaker is warm or bright and so on.
 
AV Max contains Hi Fi Choice reviews IIRC. And Stereophile content is available online.

But AV Max's own reviews are so gut-wrenchingly painful (the incompetence is staggering) that it's difficult to pick up a copy even just for the hi fi choice reviews.

Here it seems only what hi fi and avmax are available. Of the two i would pick whathifi.
 
AV Max contains Hi Fi Choice reviews IIRC. And Stereophile content is available online.

But AV Max's own reviews are so gut-wrenchingly painful (the incompetence is staggering) that it's difficult to pick up a copy even just for the hi fi choice reviews.

Yes they made a mess of the Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 review... the Hifi choice reviews in AVMax are plain better.

I have the Diamond 9.1, a much praised budget speaker, which I was planning to exchange for the newly launched 10.1.

The 10.1 sounded good in the mid-range and treble, but had loose boomy bass with sloppy timing on bass notes... Not good; AVMax check your ears!
 
Yes they made a mess of the Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 review... the Hifi choice reviews in AVMax are plain better.

I have the Diamond 9.1, a much praised budget speaker, which I was planning to exchange for the newly launched 10.1.

The 10.1 sounded good in the mid-range and treble, but had loose boomy bass with sloppy timing on bass notes... Not good; AVMax check your ears!

so i am not the only one complaining about the 10.1/10.2 wharfdales with their bass timings all over the place - the 9.1/9.2 was essentially better - i guess there is a lot more to speaker design than the placement of the port. :ohyeah:
 
so i am not the only one complaining about the 10.1/10.2 wharfdales with their bass timings all over the place - the 9.1/9.2 was essentially better - i guess there is a lot more to speaker design than the placement of the port. :ohyeah:

:lol:

Yes! my friend, I fully agree with you! The bass on the 10.1 was like a Diesel Amby chasing a Merc(the rest of the frequency spectrum)! :p

But AVMax left a huge 5 feet behind the 10.1 to fix its bass... now who would buy a budget speaker and place it in a palace! :rolleyes:
 
Yes they made a mess of the Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 review... the Hifi choice reviews in AVMax are plain better.

I have the Diamond 9.1, a much praised budget speaker, which I was planning to exchange for the newly launched 10.1.

The 10.1 sounded good in the mid-range and treble, but had loose boomy bass with sloppy timing on bass notes... Not good; AVMax check your ears!

I had once mentioned on the wharfedale 10 series thread that the older series will probably sound better and to look out for closure deals on them rather than going after the 10 series. Most of these new series are usually an exercise in marketing to take advantage of nave/newbies and to make them part with their money :D

As far as technology is concerned, there has been absolutely no technological advances or advanced practices in the budget level production. It has actually become worse. They are cutting corners all over the place. I have heard 10 to 15 year old speakers which will wipe the floor with most sub 50k loudspeakers in the market today in any department of sound reproduction. Case in point is a particular celestion bookshelf model which a friend of mine in his home. It is almost 17 years old:o
Do not get misled by these gimmicks. I would say you should hunt for the 8 series wharfedales if you can. Buy used. You will get a well broken in pair :D
 
Hmm.... lets not draw generalized conclusions :)

I had once mentioned on the wharfedale 10 series thread that the older series will probably sound better and to look out for closure deals on them rather than going after the 10 series. Most of these new series are usually an exercise in marketing to take advantage of nave/newbies and to make them part with their money :D

As far as technology is concerned, there has been absolutely no technological advances or advanced practices in the budget level production. It has actually become worse. They are cutting corners all over the place. I have heard 10 to 15 year old speakers which will wipe the floor with most sub 50k loudspeakers in the market today in any department of sound reproduction. Case in point is a particular celestion bookshelf model which a friend of mine in his home. It is almost 17 years old:o
Do not get misled by these gimmicks. I would say you should hunt for the 8 series wharfedales if you can. Buy used. You will get a well broken in pair :D

Not always true!

The Diamond 10.1, IMHO, has a better mid-range and higher resolution than the 9.1.... however they probably got the bass wrong to ruin an otherwise nice speaker!

They might still do better with lots of space behind them, whereas the 9.1 with its front ports are very easy to place!

I will have to do some serious re-listening to the 10.1 at the showroom and find out if re-positioning/use of stands helps them... but yes the bass is probably a suspect area for the 10 series!
 
I started my hifi journey with reading avMax & still kept its 1st issue.

Earlier rev were detailed ,now they are short.They rev with Indian music & mov too.
recently I started reading hifi & it has more rev than max,but in short.

I selected Tannoy F1 on hifi & our forum recommendation.
 
I may sound like a black sheep here but I never buy anything without having seen data charts from 3rd party reviewers. Even then I am very pessimistic as some could be on the payroll or taking advantage of marketing fees.

I mainly use the mags to read about new product offerings pretty much. So, in effect I subscribe to a number of threads or softcopy of the magazines.
 
I like to read these magazines only because they update me on new products,. even that can be done through net now a days. But i have seen few people in cochin who have bought equipments based on the Magazine reviews.
 
Is what hi-fi still "angrez ki aulad?":yahoo::yahoo::clapping::lol::mad::mad::mad::ohyeah::rolleyes:

As they used to report "Freeview tuners" in LCD's,their prices were weird and nowhere near street prices, also I remember they were talking about DAB ( Digital audio brodcast), I think the review team must be getting special brodcast ,by order of queen!

To be very honest for them Norge,Pulz,Mitashi, Onida,Lyrita etc do not exist !!!
 
Do not get misled by these gimmicks. I would say you should hunt for the 8 series wharfedales if you can. Buy used. You will get a well broken in pair :D

Correct. I got misled because the 8.2 I heard at dealers were not properly mounted and sounded muddy. In retrospect I could have got them to sound much nicer at home and saved 3K over the 9.2 for a little compromise on depth but better midrange and treble overall.

Go for 8 if you see a demo piece for discount sale!

Cheers
 
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