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In Jez Ford’s recollection, producing What Hi-Fi? before the digital era meant faxed freelance reviews, paper layouts assembled with scissors and adhesive, and slides sent away for scanning. The shift to staff reviewers and shared listening rooms changed not only how the magazine was made, but how its judgments were compared. Ford recounts the transformation in a first-person retrospective published as the magazine marked its 50th anniversary in 2026.
What magazine production looked like when Ford arrived
Ford says he joined What Hi-Fi? as assistant editor under Simon Davies in 1988. A manual typewriter was waiting on his desk. He began instead with his own compact word processor, which he recalls could hold 32 characters in its 4kB memory. These are Ford’s memories, not independently verified product specifications.
Most review writers were freelancers working from home. Their copy arrived by fax on long strips of thermal paper. Editors cut and rearranged the text by hand, marked corrections, then sent the copy to a typing pool. The resulting typeset text came back as bromide columns, which art editors trimmed and pasted onto tracing-paper layouts with Spray Mount.
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Why the process was vulnerable
A courier crash could damage a layout or lose images. Corrections discovered at the print stage might mean cutting text out, re-spacing the page and making new plates. Ford remembers the magazine checking plates at printers in Whitstable or Cornwall. His account makes clear how much the finished issue depended on physical materials reaching the right place intact and on time.
Freelance reviews and the move to in-house listening
Ford describes the editorial team of that period as largely journalists rather than specialist reviewers, with Andrew Everard serving as technical editor. Freelancers wrote most of the reviews. In his account, bringing reviewing in-house and establishing listening rooms became a major structural change: reviewers could hear products within a shared process, and colleagues could cross-check one another’s opinions.
Ford says the change also reduced the need to courier review equipment between contributors and made selecting the annual Awards easier. He recalls that the Awards had been expanded to include price categories, so readers could find recommendations across different budgets. These are Ford’s explanations of the magazine’s decisions and their effects, rather than an independently audited assessment.
His concise summary of the contrast is: “There were no computers. There were no listening rooms.”
Computers arrived late, in Ford’s recollection
Even after computers were acquired, Ford says an internal dispute involving the National Union of Journalists delayed their introduction. He remembers the machines sitting in storage for 18 months before they were brought into use. The timing and details are part of his memoir rather than a separately corroborated chronology.
Ford’s career at the magazine continued through roles as deputy editor and then editor. He recalls taking over Hi-Fi Answers as it became Audiophile, leaving for three-and-a-half years of travel, then returning to edit What Hi-Fi?. He says he later left for Australia.
The Verve cover dispute: Ford’s account, with a date caveat
Ford recalls a legal claim by lawyers for The Verve over a cover line encouraging readers to make their own CDs, alongside an image of the band’s CD. He says the company’s lawyers had approved the feature and the record label’s public-relations team had supplied the CD for magazine use. According to Ford, the claim was paid because the amount sought was slightly less than the cost of defending the case.
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Ford dates the lawsuit to “1998, I think.” The retrospective does not give a case name or court record, so the episode and its timing should be understood as his recollection, not as independently verified legal history.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the pre-digital story shows
Ford’s retrospective is a profile of a working magazine adapting its production and review practices: freelance copy and physical artwork gave way to computer-based production, while external reviews gave way to a shared in-house listening process. The story’s value lies in the specific mechanics and the remembered decisions—not in treating one magazine’s experience as a universal account of publishing or audio reviewing.
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