Is "WHAT HI-FI" a good read?

I also think you are right and they do not take the time to burn in equipment and match systems. It seems in my experience better equipment needs more burn in time. Maybe why they seem to favor the cheaper stuff as I mentioned above.

There is a lot of consensus that the Cambridge Audio D500 CD player is a great value for a an under $400 CD player. They hated it and thought it was extremely dull and bland, which is how it sounds right out of the box before it breaks in.

I liked the old Hi-Fi Choice a lot (probably because they agreed with my opinion of a lot of the older equipment that they have reveiwed in the past:-). However they seem to have reorganized and the new reviews are not anywhere near as informative as the old. Hopefully they will go back to more in depth reviews as others must have already noted this to them.

PS: In the past I have noticed that some raving 5 star components reviewed by What Hi-Fi only rate 3-4 stars from Hi-Fi Choice (quite a spread I would say). In addition if you go through the old reviews you will see that Hi-Fi Choice has returned various "defective" components to the manufacturers (ones that operated, but that did not seem quite right) for ones that were "right", which shows that they were really listening.

Sugarbie,I agree about the reviews however if you check their monthly testing CD's,it's usually a mixture of styles of music they listen to or at least profess to listen to.
Personally I think this mag is about keeping the low to medium market in the UK buoyant but I'm sceptical about reviews anyway,even in the better mags...

Ben

About their rating system : the price of the components effect the ratings. Like say a $10000 KRELL had a 3 stars rating, does not mean the $300 NAD with 5 stars is better than the KRELL, the KRELL would be far better the NAD in absolute sense, but the KRELL is not favorit against a $10000 Meridian with 5 stars. You can found this writing in the front of list of components.
About their fairness, I would say they are about the only mag dares to let 5 or 6 same price range components go head to head and tell you how good the winner is and how bad the loser is. So I don't see they are afraid to upset the advertisers.
But they only review mid-fi stuffs which it is true. And of course, they don't take time to burn-in.