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What Hi-Fi?
What Hi-Fi?
Technology
Jonathan Evans

Brilliant step-up loudspeakers, car stereo and VCRs: we revisit the What Hi-Fi? archives from 45 years ago

Two What Hi-Fi? covers side by side, one from January 1981, one May 2026.

Our back issues and bound copies of What Hi-Fi? magazine live on the shelves of our hi-fi listening rooms. Not only are they a handy reference tool, but they also serve as useful acoustic room treatment that gives the rooms a more balanced sonic character.

It always amazes me, when I venture in to the room – more often than not disturbing Kashfia, our long-suffering and extremely patient hi-fi and audio editor, in the process – to delve into our archives, how both very different and yet reassuringly familiar the magazines I leaf through are to me. The more things change, the more they stay the same, etc and so on and so forth.

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