Did you know almost all of the audio print magazines are free? And you don’t even need to leave your home.
After a revolving door of apps (Zinio, RB Digital, Overdrive, and others), most North American libraries have settled on Libby as the online platform for their patrons. Your app store will have this available as a free download, and can be accessed on a browser through libbyapp.com
Libby is a terrible service to borrow books because of the rules and security protocols in place to protect the book industry. That’s why a NY Times best seller only has a couple of e-books in library circulation for a city of a million. However, magazines remain generous with the number of electronic copies available for circulation.
Once you’ve selected your local branch and logged in with your library card and PIN (consult your library on how to obtain both), you will have a magazine section with the current issues and several years of back issues. Every library service chooses their mix of publishers, and my local library has the following available:
English magazines:
- Absolute Sound
- Audio Esoterica
- Australian HiFi
- Best Buys Audio & AV
- Stereophile
- Sound & Vision
- What Hi-Fi?
French magazines:
- What Hi-Fi? France
German magazines:
- Audio Germany
- Audio Test
- HiFi Test TV-HiFi
Japanese:
- Stereo Sound
- HiVi
Taiwanese Chinese (not pinyin)
- Audio Art Magazine
- Prime AV
Don’t disregard the magazines in another language; there’s something to be said about Japanese magazine layouts. All of these magazines are great eye candy but dreadful for making rational audio video purchasing decisions. You’re better off getting past copies of the Audio Critic, which has consumer education that’s still relevant decades later:
http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_down.htm
