Over time many questions have been asked to me and in most cases also answered.
But since they are in the comments of a video, they are often missed by people having the
same questions.
So I decided to do a FAQ on video.
And start right away with the first one:
Many of my videos contain the remark at the end that I don't do buying advise.
Despite that I am asked often by people what to buy, elegantly hidden in third person hypotheses.
Sometimes, when there is only one answer possible, like with "should I stop my music hobby",
I am stupid enough to do answer.
That then is seen as an opportunity by others and the "what should I buy"-questions
start again.
Now, why won't I give buying advise, even if the viewer clearly states that he won't
hold it agains me if that advise would turn out badly?
Well, I don't want to disappoint you.
It is impossible to know the combination of your system, your listening environment, your
choice of music and your personal preferences.
Let alone things that might be of influence that you are not even aware of.
What I can do - and that is what I do all the time - is to look for equipment that might
be of above average price/performance, review that and tell you where it will fit in one
of my three reference setups.
Number 3 costed below 1000 euros, setup 2 around 4000 euros and setup 1 around 20,000
euros.
See the link in the comments for a full description.
Usually it is not possible to do a fair comparison between two almost equal products.
There will be many that will disagree but I have had a publishing company where perhaps
the best audio journalists of my country worked- one of them then also working for Stereophile.
Often we didn't agree on what product we liked better within a comparable group of
products.
We could agree on the level of sound quality but rarely on a winner.
One found fierce attacks of snare drums the most important, the second the stereo image
and a clean midrange, the third the overall dynamics and the fourth was somewhere in-between.
Again, provided the equipment was in the same quality class.
Therefore I try to give you an impression of the quality class a product is in, the
rest is up to you.
Only when I am pretty sure a given product or setup at that time outperforms anything
else, I will be clear on that.
See for instance the SOtM sMS-200 Ultra review.
Headphones have become rather popular these days and from and entrepreneurial standpoint
I would love to review them.
But even the best ones don't give me listening pleasure.
So I had two options: make up fake reviews or just be honest about it and don's do
headphone and in-ear reviews.
Obviously I chose for the last option.
And please don't mail me that headphones can give enormous pleasure for I know, I've
seen it around me.
It's just not my thing.
I have had many requests to review cables, often mentioning brands and types that were
on the wishing lists.
Although all components in a stereo should be of equal quality, there are no components
that CAN have an equally big effect on the sound than cables.
They can be influenced a lot by the equipment they are connected to.
A good example is a wideband amplifier used with woven cables.
Due to the high capacitance of those cables that amp might oscillate to some degree and
so ruining the sound completely.
The amp is great, the cables are great but they should not be combined.
Less obvious are interlinks where the electrical dimensions of the output and input they are
connected are such that the cable can have all kinds of effects.
So you should always try cables in situ.
Find a dealer that will accept them back if they are not to your likings.
Of course, undamaged and in the original packing.
Sometimes dealers have a set of burned in cables that you can hire or lend and if you
like them, you buy a set of new ones.
Trust your ears and only pay for improvements.
And if you like the sight of those fist thick loudspeaker cables that don't sound better
and are willing to pay for the view, be my guest.
On a show someone told me he bought Advance power amps for he liked the large VU meter
on the front.
At least he was honest about it and those amps are fine with or without VU meters.
I have been asked often to report on my three setups, sometimes I was asked to do a video
on them.
There is a complete list of the equipment I use on my website theHBproject.com.
The links are below this video in Youtube.
I will not do a video on the setups since that doesn't tell you much more than a list
of the equipment.
Furthermore I love my privacy and it would take considerable production time to make
that into an agreeable video.
I had an unfortunate school career.
I grew up in a middle class family - all hairdressers - in a period where Europe was rebuilding
itself from the second world war.
Had I grown up under different conditions I might have found fitting education but I
didn't.
I am not complaining and certainly not blaming my parents for they did all they could and
sometimes tried to do even more.
But I did end up in the wrong schools, like the school for retail business.
So I became a school dropout and started working as a sales person in what was then the high-end
audio shop in the Netherlands: Muziek Staffhorst.
In my spare time I read about anything I could find on audio, joined friends in a small recoding
studio that we ran in our spare time and became the recording specialist at Staffhorst.
After eight years I shifted jobs to a distributor of professional audio gear as a sales rep.
I visited a many studios and professional musicians and learned a lot.
One of the things I learned was that I was a poor sales rep for I started to know too
much of the equipment I sold.
By accident I met the editor in chief of the leading Dutch hifi magazine - Hifi Stereo
Test - and told him that an article on noise reduction was full of errors.
He asked me to write a proper article and that is where I found my love for this work.
I became full time tech journalist in 1983 and soon wrote for many tech magazines in
my country and some UK magazine on pro audio.
In 1989 I started my own publishing company, publishing the very well respected Pro-Audio
Magazine that later also included professional video and thus became Pro Audio-VIdeo.
In those years I have reviewed professional analogue and digital recorders and supervised
brilliant colleagues doing reviews on the first digital mixing consoles.
In 2003 I started a second magazine, focussed on streaming audio and video for the consumer.
That was 15 years ago and a bit early.
The publishing company stopped since print on specialists subjects was a diminishing
market and thus unable to survive the bank recession.
Over the years I have been studying audio, helped by the fact that journalists have easier
access to people with knowledge.
Over all those years I also developed my listening skills.
I learned a lot about video from my work with the pro-mag and started making holiday movies
to get some feel with making programs.
I have worked with Avid, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and some other video editing programs
I - and the market - forgot the name of.
I must have been in 2005 that I made the first video podcast for the consumer magazine, Vi-Fi.
The knowledge I have accumulated over the years was mainly discovered and developed
by people smarter than I am.
I could be sad about the publishing company that went broke but that's silly.
We all knew that print sooner or later will phase out, starting with vertical markers
in small language areas like the Dutch language area with only about 20 million people in
The Netherlands and Belgium speaking that language.
So I started my project to tell people about the joy of a good music reproduction at home
on the website theHBproject.com.
I had been developing a two step approach to loudspeaker placement but realised I needed
some animation to explain it well.
This ended up being a video I published on Youtube in may 2014 and it was extremely popular
right away.
This video still is the most watch on my channel, the link is in the comments, in the top right
corner and at the end of this video.
That got me thinking, so I started experimenting making videos of my written review.
It took me more than a year of preparation before I was more or less satisfied and after
my vacation in 2015 I started publishing videos on a regular bases to end up publishing one
video per week now.
That lead to 2.6 million views in total at the end of may 2018 and being viewed 140,000
times, almost 700 thousand minutes in total, per month.
The editorial is never payed for - like with my magazines back in the day.
Companies are invited to support the channel and will be mentioned at the beginning of
the video.
But they only buy eyeballs and not editorial influence.
You, as a viewer, if you enjoy the channel, can support my work too and and thus secure
the future of the channel.
You can do this following the link to Patreon or Paypal that is in the comments and your
support is much appreciated.
For future videos subscribe to this channel or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
or Google+.Help me to help even more people enjoy music at home by telling your friends
on the web about this channel.
I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com.
And whatever you do, enjoy the music.
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