What Hi Fi Magazine in the UK

[elwood]

The March 2004 issue of What Hi Fi magazine is in the shops with a 'special' supplement called What MP3.

That, in itself, is interesting - given that the magazine stopped reviewing Minidisc products last year, saying they were not 'real' hi fi because of the lossy compression used.

Anyway, there is a comparitive review of HDD-based players, in which iRiver comes a poor second to Apple's iPod... It is worth pointing out (before anyone decides to shoot the messenger!) that they compared a 20Gb iPod priced £299 with an iHP-100 at £329. (Yes I did type iHP-100)
Current prices on Amazon.co.uk are £289 for the Apple and £245 for an iHP-120 so the comparison is extremely unfair on that basis alone.

What Hi Fi's website is www.whathifi.com and their email address seems to be whfanswers@haynet.co m - just in case anyone feels tempted to tell them they are at least 6 months out of date on the iRiver products and pricing.

[elwood]

I forgot to mention... in the 36 pages of this suplement there were 12 photos featuring iPods, 7 mini iPods in pictures and nearly every article referred to the the iPod, but the really funny thing was that nearly all the Apples that were shown had only one or two bars of battery life left!

[FlameGrilled]

I normally avoid such mags like the plague.. i kinda got this pet hate of audiophiles and journo wannbes who like to look down on mere mortal equipment such as 'we' use. Just read the article in the main mag about the home cinema sound installation.. the attitude and disrespect for non-blank cheque buyers stinks something rotten.

Anyway, yes i picked it up out of curiosity.. i gues since it's getting close to the annual CatsPaw award time for real-world product excellence and general 'wow, now that's a good idea' commendations for lovely everyman products, and was in literally ready to keep reaching for the in-lflight 'yeuck' pager bag at virtuall every paragraph and phrase.

Needless to say, if i had been in desperate need to find an artificial way to induce vomiting - that issue and it's supplement was a perfect candidate as a vomiting inducer.

I needn't go into details of why.. if you read it.. you'd understood the effect.

The only MP3 bit of any real worth.. was the 'musiccast' item about piping streamed audio around a house.. and that was marginal, to say the least, as i really dont think the everyman in most people is gonna shell out around 2000 UKP for a server and one (read ..one) controller/station...

Hand me the flamethrower someone, and load up the ballistic catapult with the biggest dungball you can find.. i fancy sending a nice flaming pile of crap in the direction of the publishers of What HiFi.... :P

Or we could just tac-nuke em from orbit....

FG

[elwood]

I like to pick it up about once a year to see whats going on, but can't get too excited about the difference between an 80 quid interconnect and a 90 quid interconnect. When I saw there was a 'special' on MP3 I thought I would make that the issue I buy this year.

Still... you do have to stand back in awe of the Apple marketing department for taking something Creative started making years ago and getting everyone to think they invented the concept.

(You also have to be a little in awe of that £3300 Yamaha amp on page 4... so many sockets on the back...)

[FlameGrilled]

That's why i picked it up really, as it was bound to be a topic of interest here and someone would mention it.., and it does no harm to have an annual laugh-a-thon at whatever is fufilling the aural sexual fantasies of the audiophiles of the world :P

True.. Apple did do a pretty good thing, in reinventing the history of the HDD jukebox. It shows there are some clever, if devious, people in their marketing outfit - pity that such companies can't find tech and development people with the same devotion to the art of design.

Sure, they can.. but they'd have to pay a whackig great wedge of cash.. or unfavourable high stock share incentives :P

I'm pretty sure the top people at Apple wouldn't stand for some whizzkid group of mere techies being offered similar share incentives to their fat-cat golden parachutes :P

The Yamaha amp... i dont know whether that whole concept will take off, but yes.. it's certainly not short of a connection or so to spare, and a few dozen you'd probably never use outside of a studio environment

£3300 - my whole semi-pro studio came to less than that, including all the upgrades over the last ten years .... *gasps in amazement*

FG