Talk Stuff To Go Multi Channel.

Some of you may know that I have been a reviewer of home loudspeakers for many, many years. It started as I was nagging a publisher about offering him ‘˜real’ hifi in cars for his magazine about home audio. He said ‘No, but there is a new magazine starting up about this surround sound stuff, and my writers won’t write about subwoofers. So would you?’ I bit his arm off at the shoulder.

That turned out to be a false start. I was sent stuff to test and it was also sent to a laboratory for some tech pull-throughs. Although the mag only lasted eight issues, it was clear that my review judgement was matching up well with what the tech tests said about stuff in general, which was reassuring.

So I was in the right place for Home Cinema Choice magazine when it first came out all but immediately after that, with Steve May as the editor. That was many years and 265 issues ago. In that time I remained a freelance reviewer and was sent stuff to act as a demo rig of reference to test the speakers of various makers upon. I had the AV amp and AV processor as well as posh cables and a £2,500 subwoofer from REL. A Stentor II, it has but a single ten in it, but is the result of many years of mad prototyping by Richard Lord. He would build box after box and reinforce it more and more until the damn thing could drop subsonics in-room.

Over the years I would tell the magazine a little about car audio bass and I loved to use Pixar movies for my reviews. So I was dubbed ‘The UK’s leading writer about Extreme Audio. Adam writes about bass, hifi and er, cartoons.’ as my brief biog, which, I of course adored.
In fact, I was longer associated with the title than anyone, lasting through all the editors and various changes of ownership. It was sold thrice underneath me, with myself and the other writers counting as fixtures and fittings in an hotel. I think I once referred to myself as a gold tap!

But that has fractured and I no longer work for them. I had had a review ‘˜interfered with’ previously, with the principal, a chap from the new owners of REL, insisting on coming to my house when their woofer was delivered, to angle it just SO, and play a certain warm-up track he approved while they HAD to take me out to lunch. Oddly, for a fat man, lunching on the business really doesn’t do much for me. I have been spoilt by Teppan table and high end Sushi in Japan – and you ain’t gonna compete with that! I let it pass but swore to myself that it was not happening like that again. Especially as despite my efforts at lunch, he would reveal nothing technical whatsoever about the transducer in their new enclosure. I was vexed.

Then a while later, another product is offered up for review and I get asked to receive the same chap (who I was told approved of me immensely) with the same UK executive type at home and to get taken out. I really wanted it to be merely delivered this time and asked for that to happen. I was told ‘no’ and that I was so liked by the chap that he wanted to see me again. I told the bloke that I was on a family holiday that week. he said, ‘Well avoided!’ and I thought he got it. Then, I got an e-mail explaining that the American had moved his trip by a week, which would in fact cover American Independence day and he wouldn’t let up.

Finally forced into figuring this might even be a social skills issue, I finally lost it and sent a mail that said the man had interfered with the review and simply wasn’t welcome in my house.

I thought long and hard before finally pressing send.

But slightly pregnant? A little bit dead? Only a bit interfered-with-and-maybe-over-entertained-to-biased-review? BOLLOCKS!

OK, death, pregnancy and hifi reviews are hardly comparable, proving a massive Rayner Flaw in that towering pomposity of medical ethics but for hifi. What can I do? I am a second generation journalist and simply soaked it up from my mama, medical editor of Woman’s Own for thirty years amongst a few other things.

So I get my telling-off email from my editor, who is overworked but still the cleverest one I ever had. I would look at my copy in Home Cinema Choice and marvel at how much cooler I seemed after his light touch, even when for a change, I was over-length. And I apologised like I meant it in my reply, for we are all just making magazines together. But he didn’t reply and three days later, as I did once for T3, I actually sacked an editor.

Freelance relationships go both ways.

I slunk off, to lick my wounds, thinking that for a few reviews each year, (for I was only getting the huge super sub bass systems and the biggest, most monstrous speaker arrays to do, like the new KEF reference £40K speakers on £40k of Arcam and £90k cost in total, including cables and stands.) that I could cope and just do more of other stuff. Part of how I lasted so long on the title was not needing to beg for copy in each issue to survive.

I am clearly thrilled to be here, though. At the home of KEF:

However, when I took the B&W-equipped press fleet Volvo XC90 to B&W’s Steyning research establishment to film it, I was startled by the reaction when I told them about my split with HCC.

They were dismayed, since Home Cinema Choice was pretty much the only place that took high end multi channel seriously and reviewed big speaker packages. I asked their advice about who else they knew about in the press, as I was a hitherto fiercely loyal soul and simply had no idea who else published what. I got a name or two and asked about. One in particular of those names, was just about to have his phone meeting with the American owners. Myself and multi-channel reviewing got discussed. I was told that my ‘˜body of work in the field was important and that I was respected and they would love to.but their dyed-in-the-wool two channel stereo readership would likely see it as a terrible straying away from core business and leave in droves. So that was a ‘˜no’.
Did you ever see The Lion King? The bit when Pumba says, ‘Hey what if he was on OUR side?’ Well, it was slow to dawn but I realised that our Guru originally named Talk Stuff, as Talk Audio, not Talk Car Audio, specifically to enable all audio to be discussed. What if we do it here?
Why not run great big reviews of immense, super-top-end loudspeakers and home cinema systems right here on Talk Stuff? I have relationships with at least a dozen important manufacturers of state of the art equipment, from mains, to source, to transducer and if I can pull it off, the idea is that the content can be used in whole, in extract.. in ALL the exact opposite of those poncy copyright statements, by the thus Site-Associate manufacturers, so long as they say where it came from. It’d be easy to plug into the new geek-marketing method, where mainstream.com points at specialistgeek.com and says that this bunch of super-experts endorse THEIR snadgers above all others..and they know their snadgers!

It yet again again boils down to The Opinion Of Someone Who’s Opinion Can Be Respected. And after all this time and £5.8 million-worth of different loudspeakers reviewed in a career (one system was a million all on its own, mind) I am worthy at least of trying.
Oh well, now, I have to go and write the editorial that this was supposed to be, as despite the normal listing, for the time until a new editorial is published, it goes on the front page and if it is too long, the column hangs below the last story. Which upsets my Guru publisher’s Justifiable Net Designer Angst, since it looks poke!

Thus, prepare to covet worse, to ache with sinful want far more and maybe, just maybe, find a #LifeGoal purchase idea or two.

Drive carefully, enjoy your tunes, don’t get nicked.

Adam Rayner On Line Editor