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From: greg@olivej.UUCP (Greg Paley)
Newsgroups: net.audio,net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Audio/Music magazines
Message-ID: <180@olivej.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Jun-84 12:40:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: olivej.180
Posted: Thu Jun 14 12:40:49 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Jun-84 00:40:54 EDT
Organization: Olivetti ATC, Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 46

The magazines I like best are the hardest to find locally,
being either European or of a limited distribution.

For record reviews, the most consistently trustworthy I've
found are B.H. Haggin's in the quarterly "Yale Review".
The hitch is that this is extremely hard to find, even
in libraries, even though it is published in the U.S.
I find his reviews worth the trouble of searching.
To those who like extensive prose in reviews, though,
he will be unsatisfactory since his comments are terse
and to the point, often dealing with thirty records in
a single page.

For readers of German, I recommend "Fono Forum" and
"Stereoplay".  Many U.S. university libraries will have
them, although they are next to impossible to find on
newsstands.  Their equipment reviews are much more critical
than those in High Fidelity and Stereo Review, and always
contain a "price vs. performance" judgement which I like
to see, even if I might end up disagreeing.  Of course,
there is "Absolute Sound" but I can certainly understand
those who find the egoism and adolescent writing style
of many of its contributors irritating.  I personally find
their reviews of sound quality of recordings very reliable
but those of performance quality highly unreliable (does
anyone with any knowledge of music really think Antal
Dorati is one of the podium greats of the age?).

"Gramophone" is, at least locally, the most easily available
of the imports, but I find its equipment reviews vastly
inferior to the English mag "Hi/Fi News and Record Review".
The record reviews I find about on a par with "Fanfare" - i.e.,
much better than High Fidelity or Stereo Review but considerably
below Yale Review or Fono Forum in terms of reliability.  This
is, of course, very subjective since it indicates only the
proximity of what the critics say with what my ears tell me.
For vocal recordings, though, "Gramophone" has an inestimable
advantage in John Steane, since he knows his stuff about the
voice better than just about any other writer in the business.

	- Greg Paley