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Why TAS is starting to drive me away
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Posted on May 27, 2004 at 12:49:11 | ||
1. It's expensive relative to the content they put out per year. 2. Inconsistency in quality of writers. Besides HP, Harley, Jonathan Valin, and maybe Neil Gader, the other writers have only opinions to express, but no facts. Does TAS think I subscribe because I'm really interested in how the gear sounds to each reviewer, so I can hope to buy such gear month after month? Hell no, it's a hobby for me, and what makes the publication will principally be the quality of the writers, not simply the gear they review (caveat is Sound & Vision, which has poor writers and reviews mass market gear. Yawn.) I used to think HP was arrogant; in hindsight, I think he's concise and confident and way more interesting. He lets his bias blast through, his personality come out. SPhile writers do way better in letting me get to know them and their quirks. Love or hate Dudley or "Gillette" or Atkinson or even ole CG, but I know them through their writing and look forward to reading their prose. Using car magazines as an analogy, TAS is becoming the Motor Trend or Road & Track to Sphile's Automobile (which has the best damn writers in their industry) 3. Lack of any real technical data. I would never buy based on stats alone, but most readers read not to buy but to be entertained. I am interested in how it works and measures simply because it is interesting. They have a technical guru in Harley (I just reread his 1993 article on digital jitter, fantastic!) but you'd never know they had the chops from reading their magazine. Turn Harley loose with a tech summary of the gear reviewed. Reread the last three issues; except for the writers mentioned above, you could guess that they were all written by the same person with little technical knowledge of how things tick. Tell me about the design inspiration, about the company philosophy or history, about how the product is built and assembled, about the personalities. Don't simply repeat again about how the passage of Frickin Diana Krall peeled back layers or removed veils or the such. 4. Similarity to stuff reviewed elsewhere. TAS and Sphile are beginning to resemble competing car magazines, which review the same stuff as the other. Ever take a peek at Enjoy the Music or Six Moons? I see stuff reviewed there I would never even hear of (though TAS seems way better than Sphile about reviewing gear from newer speciality manufacturers. At $25 bucks a year vs $11 for Sphile, where's the great bargain? HP writes such little copy that unlike old TAS, it hardly seems worth the increased price. Perhaps I'll continue to subscribe, but only because you can't easily read an online mag while your sitting on the pot. |
I meant "brothel" not "brother" analogy (nt), posted on June 1, 2004 at 09:27:33 | |
Posts: 116
Location: Connecticut Joined: May 28, 2004 |
no wonder it made no sense! |
Re: HP had the art to let us salivating..., posted on June 13, 2004 at 11:26:31 | |
Posts: 43825
Joined: March 4, 2001 |
Even if he was inconsistent in time, still was the best. |