About VINYL-CHECK

There was a time when a test verdict still meant something. When a phrase such as “outstanding sound quality” was the result of a listening comparison and not the result of a telephone call. That time is not as far back as one might think — and that is precisely why VINYL-CHECK exists.

The Beginning: 2012, a YouTube Channel, a Conviction

It all began in 2012 with a YouTube channel devoted to the sound quality of records — at a time when that was still considered a niche and not a trend. What followed was a development that one might charitably call the “democratisation of listening” and less charitably an influx of entirely clueless self-publicists, while at the same time what once called itself the “trade press” shrank away in ever smaller print runs and ever greater dependence. Together, the two have left a gap — and gaps, as more than a decade in the business has taught us, rarely fill themselves with quality.

Why This Is Needed

One need not be a cynic to notice that in large parts of today’s hi-fi publishing, passages of text sound remarkably alike — down to individual phrasings, as though people had spared one another the listening. Nor need one invoke a conspiracy: it suffices to overhear, just once, how the conversation between industry and so-called trade magazine is not about the loan of a test unit, but about what the test report is to say in the end — and, in the same breath, about the timing of future advertising bookings. Whoever has heard that once hears every “top rating” a little differently afterwards. The magazines of today are in many places no longer intermediaries between industry and customer, but their extended advertising department, to put it kindly. VINYL-CHECK sets out to straighten precisely this relationship: the needs of listeners and those of the industry can be brought together — only not at the expense of the truth.

The Mind Behind It

Managing director and editor-in-chief of VINYL-CHECK is Sascha Deutsch, though this is being supplemented, with growing pleasure, by guest contributions — good ears, after all, are not tied to a single person. His own path there led from qualification as a computer scientist and state-certified electrical specialist to a part-time distance-learning course as a sound engineer. The finer points of mastering were taught by none other than Doug Sax, co-founder of Sheffield Lab and The Mastering Lab — a school in which a tenth of a decibel could already trigger a difference of opinion. Loudspeaker development was taught by Berndt Stark, who worked for Harman/Kardon, JBL, Quadral and Burmester and is the author of the “Lautsprecher-Handbuch” — one of those books one does not read but works through. And musing on hi-fi in its most eloquent form is an art taught by Cai Brockmann — that expertise and elegance do not exclude one another but condition one another is a lesson that can still be found today in every line of this magazine.

What Legitimises Us

Verdicts deserve trust only when the conditions under which they arise withstand the standard they themselves set. Every test at VINYL-CHECK takes place in the magazine’s own listening room — shielded from the noise of the outside world and acoustically aligned to EBU Tech 3276, the standard by which professional monitoring rooms in broadcasting and studios are also oriented, not to whatever happens to sound good. Calibrated measuring equipment supplies the figures, a familiar reference environment supplies the context without which figures would remain mere figures — for a result that cannot be mirrored against known terrain is at best a snapshot. And above all this stands an education that is not exhausted in a weekend seminar, but brings together computer science, electrical engineering, sound engineer training as well as the direct learning of mastering and loudspeaker development from those who shaped the discipline themselves. Titles and memberships may look good on a business card — a verdict becomes reliable only through the practice that stands behind it, and it is precisely on this that the claim this magazine makes rests.

What We Stand For

Four principles support VINYL-CHECK, and none of them is negotiable:

Quality first — every story is written by the pen of proven connoisseurs, not under the dictates of a media plan.

Community — we are building a community of passionate listeners who learn together rather than putting one over on one another.

By people, for people — sound impressions as we actually heard them, not as they sell well.

Pure joy — because in the end, for all the seriousness of the technology, it is about nothing other than the joy of good music, well reproduced.

Where We Stand

VINYL-CHECK is deliberately unbound by place — on YouTube since 2012, as an independent magazine since 2026. Good sound, after all, knows no national borders, only occasionally different power sockets.