SOUND+IMAGE: 30 years ago

Vol 2 no 3 1989

Thirty years ago, in our second year, Vol 2 no. 3 featured five full reviews. On the hi-fi side we looked at Celef’s $899 Nimbus standmount speakers, Accuphase’s E-305 integrated amplifier at $4595 (that’s $11k+ in today’s money), and Akai’s GX-95 Reference Master Cassette Deck at $1299. Akai is “concentrating research on development of the analogue cassette”, wrote Editor Richard Morgan, “with DAT development basically on the back burner”. This issue also carried a large feature headed “The LP Record — RIP?” (the question-mark perhaps indicating that we hoped not). There were two reviews of AV products: Siemens’ latest Digital Hi-Fi VHS VCR, price $1530, though reviewer Paul Burrows noted it lacked a “Made in West Germany” label), and secondly the review shown below left, Casio’s TV-1400 LCD pocket TV, for $499. Music reviews included the Go-Betweens ‘16 Lovers Lane’ (“a required purchase, everything has clicked”) and Peter Gabriel’s ‘So’ (“in my mind, not one song comes close in merit to Salisbury Hills” said Brian Williams, meaning, we’d guess, Solsbury Hill). The ads are often as interesting as the editorial given the passage of time, yet Richard Wilkins (below) seems miraculously unchanged by this process.