Ken Kessler brings you his guide to the best secondhand buys...
While it's true I am obsessed with open-reel tape, I am constantly reminded – not least via our postbag – that 'getting back into tape' is costly for both hardware and software. There are no current decks being produced besides the Ballfinger at £15,000+, brand new pre-recorded tapes start at £200, blanks ain't cheap for those who want to record their own music, and buying vintage pre-recorded tapes requires a sort of fortitude akin to driving in the London-to-Brighton veteran automobile rally.
Steve Sutherland on the vinyl treats arriving on 2020's Record Store Days
Launched in America in 2008 as a way of encouraging collectors to frequent their local independent record shops and keep vinyl alive, Record Store Day is now an annual event offering rare, limited edition releases which will not only tickle the fancy of uber-fans but, like other works of art, accrue value as investments.
Ken Kessler brings you his definitive guide to buying reel-to-reel tapes, new and secondhand
For any format, whether new or revived, it is the availability of pre-recorded music that determines its health. That's why the LP came back like gangbusters, and the otherwise-hugely-impressive Elcaset withered away. When it comes to the growing interest in reel-to-reel tapes, three routes exist for feeding the machines, and each has its adherents, while many users will adopt all three when building up a library.
As more groups turn to touring to generate revenue, Johnny Black casts an eye over the more innovative ways some bands are winning over fans
It used to be so simple. Back in the day, music artists recorded albums and then went out on expensive tours, often making a loss, in order to promote and sell considerable quantities of their LPs. The big money then was in the vinyl, and that vinyl was largely under the control of a handful of major international music corporations, such as EMI, CBS, Warner Bros, Polygram and their ilk.
Christopher Breunig recommends the best classical audiophile recordings
When I first heard a demonstration of stereo records, given at a local department store all those years ago, I came away thinking I'd heard mostly distracting surface noise. If this was 'high fidelity' I'd stick with my old Pye Black Box! But soon, of course, I was on the upgrade path avidly taking up recommendations in Hi-Fi News and Audio Record Review magazines, and reading Thomas Heinitz's regular columns in the now defunct Records & Recording.
Mike Barnes unpicks the story of the 180g vinyl reissue…
On October the 3rd 1996, after a concert by Steve Reich And Musicians at The Royal Festival Hall to mark the American composer's 60th birthday, this writer presented him with the LP sleeve of his 1978 album Music For 18 Musicians, and asked him to autograph it. This prompted some amusement on his part. 'I haven't seen one of these in a while,' he said chuckling, 'have you borrowed it from a museum?'
One-make set-up, mix 'n' match? Tim Jarman offers a step-by-step guide
Putting a hi-fi system together can be one of life's great pleasures, but it can also become expensive and complicated if not done with care. Vintage hi-fi enthusiasts have three basic options. The first is to assemble a 'one make' system, normally using a combination suggested in an old catalogue as a starting point. Another is to assemble a mixed system of vintage components. The third is to add some vintage components to a modern set-up, or complete a vintage system using modern products.
Keith Howard takes a look at the role capacitors play in audio circuits and explains how they influence sound
Was there a better time to be a hi-fi enthusiast than the late 1970s and early 1980s? It's hard to argue against it because there was so much going on, what with the development of digital audio on one hand and the rise of subjectivism on the other. Suddenly turntables and amplifiers were no longer judged by wow and flutter, rumble and price tag or power output, total harmonic distortion and price tag, but by listening to them. Shock, horror!
Steve Harris brings you the story of the influential audiophile jazz label
History books tell you that jazz first crossed the Atlantic with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who made their first records in 1917 and came to England in 1919. And that it was the coincidentally-named orchestra leader and composer James Reese Europe who first brought genuine African-American music to French ears with his black US army band in 1918.
Is there an open-reel tape revival, asks Ken Kessler
If, in 1999, you were told that vinyl would enjoy such a massive revival that in 2019 HMV would be opening a flagship store in Birmingham stocking 25,000 records, and that turntables and LPs would appear in mainstream TV ads for watches and life insurance, you'd have laughed in disbelief. But then you would have paused, because both records and turntables were never entirely out of production.
Should you invest in good acoustics? Keith Howard has some sage advice
Most of us will have asked ourselves at some point whether our next upgrade should be not to our hi-fi system but rather to the room we use it in. Could £1000 spent on absorbents and diffusers make a more profound difference to sound quality than spending the same amount on, say, a cable upgrade or a new pick-up cartridge?
Johnny Black examines the booming business of music merchandising
Here's a story I wish I didn't have to tell. Unfortunately, not to tell it would mean ignoring the alarming truth that recorded music is no longer – at least commercially – always the most important element in the recorded music industry.
Keith Howard explains how and why HFN has expanded its test regime
Time flies when you're having fun. I bought the equipment to measure headphones for Hi-Fi News as long ago as May 2007, since when I've tested around 115 different models for the magazine. These have included circumaural (over-ear) designs, supra-aural (on-ear) and insert, active and passive, priced from under £100 to almost £5000.
Tim Jarman tracks the trends in the current vintage hi-fi market...
Vintage hi-fi, like many collecting and preservation hobbies, is subject to the '30-year rule'. This states that today's top collectables are those products that were new about 30 years ago. The reasoning is that when you are young you covet certain items as objects of desire, yet lack the means to buy them. As life progresses, you (hopefully) become wealthier and look again at what it was that caught your imagination when young.
They're crucial to hi-fi, but how do they work? Keith Howard explains all...
There isn't much in a modern hi-fi system that would be familiar to the great 19th century English physicist Michael Faraday. But a time-travelling Faraday – bemused by radio frequency communication, lasers and sound reproduction in general – would find something reassuringly familiar in the transformer. For it was he who first demonstrated that electromagnetic induction can be used to link one electrical circuit to another.
© 2021 Hi-Fi News
