If I had to pick an era for simply being the happiest of my career, I would pick 2008-2012, when I held the roles of deputy editor and brand editor of What Hi-Fi?.
I've been obsessed with music and sound for my whole life, so on the day I became the editor of What Hi-Fi? Sound And Vision, I felt as if I was both reaching a summit and arriving home.
But our association didn't begin there. I had spent the previous 18 months as deputy editor for both the magazine and its newly launched website, whathifi.com, working with the wonderful team of Clare Newsome and (the sadly missed) Andy Clough, to create the first real incarnation of the website.
I will never forget Clare telling me: "We're finally going to have a proper website, so we need branded video. Sort it out, would you?" Never one to object to an ungainly splash around the deep end, I duly began the test-and-learn process of 'creating content'.
That led to much that was completely new to the brand: video reviews, How To's and unboxings, extended video show reports and interviews with industry luminaries (IAG's Peter Comeau and Ken Ishiwata of Marantz were personal highlights), as well as videos such as 'How We Test' (above), which laid out in detail the method and process on which the brand was determined to stake its reputation.
I had, in fact, worked for the magazine even earlier, as both a freelance sub-editor and, before that (2000-2001), as a staff writer and reviewer. That staff writer gig was my first 'proper' job in journalism – the first six months of which consisted almost entirely of listening to music on a ludicrously good reference system with still-technical editor, Ketan Bharadia.
I had begun my career as a journalist later than most (I was pushing 30), having enjoyed a mis-spent youth as a sessions-and-weddings guitar player – one time playing a gig to just two people listening to us in rapt attention, who turned out to be Womack and Womack!
But while the pursuit of great music, unrepeatable musical moments and exquisite sound has led me to all sorts of weird and wonderful, odd and unexpected places and situations, nothing in my career has ever matched such a solid and sustained period of consistent professional enjoyment as the time I occupied senior editorial positions at What Hi-Fi?.
Pivoting in many directions
Those years were a period of huge transition – for the What Hi-Fi? brand, for the technology and music industries, and for the world at large. At a time when traditional hi-fi sales were at an all-time low, the brand had to pivot, and in many directions at once.
Partly it was about content, as we moved, with our brand-new website, to digital, to video, to forums, to blog content and all the rest. But it was also the subject matter and the brand's fundamental mission, which moved first to TV and home cinema, then to headphones and to portable audio, and then to wireless and, above all, to streaming in all its myriad forms.
My main memory of this is that it gave the whole What Hi-Fi? team a renewed sense of purpose. We doubled down, dedicating ourselves to the exploration, discussion and evaluation of literally anything and everything that the consumer might use to enjoy music or movies. That was the core principle – our baseline.
Technological change, by this point, was already moving at high speed. Plasma TV had just given up the ghost, handing the TV field – for a short while – to LCD. Hi-fi streamers arrived and began to change the audio market, with the Naim Uniti winning our Readers' Award in its first year of existence, just as I became editor of the magazine.
3D TV came, floated around for a bit, and disappeared. But not before comedian Tim Minchin had written and performed – as I giggled into my champagne glass – a specially composed song entitled Three Is One Dimension Too Many to the industry at our What Hi-Fi? Awards ceremony. Fun times.
Within months of my becoming editor, we had seen the launch of the Sonos ZonePlayer S5, the iPad and the iPhone 3GS – effectively replacing the iPod – as well as the arrival of AirPlay, and the streamers and DACs market going mainstream.
As 2011 got underway, the tectonic plates of the TV industry were beginning to shift irrevocably away from Japan and toward the Korean companies. Later that year, Spotify Premium won our Readers' Award – signifying further shifts in perception among the public and our readers.
Renewed innovation in home audio continued, with highlights such as the launch of KEF's Concept Blade speaker, which I reported on from that years' Bristol Hi-Fi Show. We didn't know it at the time, but fairly soon, in Autumn 2012, I would leave to take on the role of KEF's UK PR representation, which I would continue through a six-year, multi-Award-winning period.
That the world was changing fast, we at What Hi-Fi? did not dispute. But what wasn't changing, as we always liked to remind people, was our (and your) love of music and movies. As the 2010s began to take shape, that simple idea drove the evolution of the What Hi-Fi? brand.
And it seems to me, happily, that this core value has not changed much in the intervening years. What Hi-Fi? still does the thing it has always done better than anyone else: 1) assemble a group of capable and intelligent reviewers; 2) have them honestly debate and argue about the products until a consensus is arrived at; 3) give the world that honest opinion until a new product comes along which changes the calculus; 4) rinse and repeat.
As a method of delivering useful and reliable information to the public about music and movie tech, I continue to think that's pretty hard to beat.
So Happy Birthday, What Hi-Fi?. And to the whole team, many happy returns!
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