I think What Hi-Fi should give awards to albums

Good idea but I don't think it will work as everyone have different taste in music and different ideas of what is good recording sound like not to mention everyone have different hifi system too (for those who have Kandy with MA speakers would get use to brightness....sorry, bad joke)

Remember this is less about musical taste and more about technical quality, Well either they have compressed the bolox off it or they haven't, I'm not sure what your getting at with different systems, I think most of the people who read What Hi-Fi have systems capable of playing music with plenty of dynamic range.

I think it would still be easy enough to find a winner each year, I think its about time someone did an award like this, I could imagine it would be slightly embarrassing to get a worse produced album award as voted for by the readers of a prestigious Hi-Fi magazine, I can imaging albums like Californication and Myths of the Near Future winning it or at least getting mentioned.
While you would probably get odd ball winners of the best album such as The 411, Kate Bush and Franz Firdinand.

It does matter, let say I don't like RAP so even if L.L.cool Jay recording is the best in the world I still think it sound ***!

Sorry, i have to disagree. it would mean cutting down on what they should be covering, and it smells like those mags who just review music coz it sounds good on decent hifi kit. and at that point it stops being about the music and more about "audiophillia". Bleurgh! Leave the music reviews to the (many many many) music mags out there. Oh, and, what Thaiman said.

Yep. Plenty of great music mags out there. For classical music Haymarket have the world's leading publication in Gramophone and there are loads of pop/rock magazines out there that give a rating for music AND sound. There is a page like this in HFC and its probably the most meaningless page in their entire magazine.

That's the problem with Gramophone - all those music reviews get in the way of the Audio section

On that subject Andrew, has the audio section got gradually smaller in Gramophone over time? I always look forward to reading it and then feel like its over as quickly as its began.

I don't think you have to be an audiophile to notice the loudness war, some albums the compresion isn't too bad, others are just unlistenable.

Personally before I had herd of the loudness war had noticed for a long time that the drums were getting quieter being quite frustrated by it, and more recently I have noticed that most of the music I listen to when I am on my bike (and this has been true since a long time before I had herd of the loudness war) has tones of dynamic range, either its old or it has been less effected by the loudness war, my favourite band is Muse, but do I listen to it on my bike, well not very much, I am much more likely to listen to Franz Firdinands first album than Muse, and now I know why, because the music moves I do!

I think the big guys at the music industry are to busy playing with each others dicks to notice that, if constant volume is fatiguing and has the effect of making you not listen to the music without most people really knowing or noticing why, then how do they expect it help them sell the next album its going to have the opposite effect.

Anyway who said What Hi-Fi should be reviewing CD's thats not what I meant.

If the mainstream music press gave any attention to how good an album sounds the Klaxons would have won EDITED all last year, its painfully obvious that, their album would sound great minus all of the compression and clipping. I just understand why they needed to make the CD versions "louder" now, the iTunes download yes, but not the CD!

I'm quite interested in this sort of thing also.

Would it maybe be possible to have a section on the new super-duper website listing the sort of music and movies that are used for reference purposes by the team ?

I know you make a few recommendations in the mag, so something like that, but expanded a little ? 

Afraid so - the number of pages I am allocated has been rather squeezed of late, in order to make room for other features. 

Movies, dvds, blu rays and hd dvds would be a better option for what hi fi to review as that kind of media makes use of all that lovely equipment we buy.

I'm with Thaiman and others, leave WHF reviewing the equipment not the CDs, DVDs or anything else. I think the balance they have at the moment where they mention albums or DVDs etc. they've used for the testing and why is enough.