March 2020

What's Within This Issue
Hi-Fi World Celebrating 30 Year Anniversary
Thirty years later, Hi-Fi World still brings you an informed view.
Editorial By Noel Keywood

  Phew! I started this magazine 30 years ago and am still alive today. Better, so is the magazine. I remember being told prophetically by our first distributor that most new magazine start-ups last at most three years. It was sobering to hear, leaving me wondering what fate would bring.

Publishing back then was tough and it has only become tougher. Remember lads magazines? Gone. Computer magazines. Gone. Even larger publications like Marie Claire, that had strong bookshelf presence, have called it a day. But Hi-Fi World trundles on with one of the steadiest readerships of all magazines out there, our distributor and subscriptions house tell me. We won't be challenging The Sun anytime soon but stability has its plus points in a market that can see drastic plunges in circulation.

Not really being a publisher, although that's my title, it sort of comes as a welcome surprise. In truth I am a dedicated engineer and always have been, designing and building radios and amplifiers through my teens. The bible back then was Wireless World magazine, an extremely serious electronics publication that I aspired to understand. Before the internet, magazines were the only source of up to date information available on a subject that was always fast moving. As sources of information, magazines reigned supreme.

The 'net has taken over – and as a distributor of information is beyond amazing. But it is a weird place. Some of the tech videos on YouTube are quite disturbing in their amateurishness and naked diatribes. I'm shocked at times, a lot of the talk revealing the narrow view and particular outlook of the presenter, with no feedback from the outside world. Bubble talk.

Hi-Fi World is no bubble. We talk to and are harangued by manufacturers – but this is how it should be. I've had the pleasure – honour – of meeting and talking to a lot of brilliant hi-fi engineers, including Peter Walker, founder of Quad, and Raymond Cooke, founder of KEF – both intellectually intense, confident and vigorous people. Best to hear what others have to say and learn.

Thirty years later Hi-Fi World still brings you an informed view, one I hope you enjoy.

–– Noel Keywood, editor.

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