Hail Home Theater!
Congratulations on the new position. I’ve followed your writing since the Home Theater magazine days. I understand the
direction that you need to take S&V in for the average reader, but I really miss the fun-loving lifestyle that Home Theater promoted, as well as its look and feel. The photography, the layout, even the print quality of the magazine made it something special. The articles were short, to the point, and full of humor. I liked the face-offs, the blind comparisons, and even the recommendations for snack food, cigars, and liquor. My wife called it “Martha Stewart Living for boys,” and she was right!
Lucas Jackson Via email
I miss the shootouts from the days of Home Theater Magazine in which multiple displays were compared by a panel of writers and ranked. This would be great for subwoofers and other components. My wife and I recently upgraded our Hsu Research VTF-3 MK2 subwoofer with an Outlaw Audio Ultra X-13 and love it. We’d enjoy seeing a shootout in S&V pitting the Outlaw Audio Ultra X-13 against the new THX Ultra-certified subwoofer from Monoprice as well as non-thx-certified subwoofers.
Jim Malik Via email
Thank you both for the memories. I was always proud in those days that we were able to put out a substantial, wildly varied publication with a skeleton staff. And I agree that humor was one of the mag’s strong points. That’s something we could use more of in Sound & Vision, though there are definitely better outlets to find out about liquor and cigars. As for product face- offs, those were made possible by multiple reviewers living in close proximity to each other. (Face- offs also appeared in the early days of Sound & Vision.) Today, AV reviewers tend to be a far-flung lot, spread far and wide across the U.S. That makes putting together a face- off a difficult prospect, though it’s not completely out of the question for the future.
I’m also happy to hear that your significant others share your enthusiasm for AV— and for AV magazines. Home Theater may have been Martha Stewart Living for boys, but we would have been glad to have had female readers as well. Same thing goes for Sound & Vision.—