Better magazine, Stereophile or Absolute Sound

I've been reading and subscribing on and off to Stereophile for about fifteen years. During that time I picked up the occasional TAS. Up until five years ago I would have said Stereophile was the better rag. In the lat few years they have lost a lot of credibility. I'm not worried about things like the ads with comments from the same issue. Both magazines send copies of their articles to the manufacturers for comments, so what's the big deal! I think the problem with Stereophile and TAS to a degree is the cousins marrying cousins. There is way to much inbreeding in this very small and tight community. And now JGH is writing for HP! What is that all about?!?
Those guys need to get out of their listening rooms and live in the real world. I'm not complaining about reviews of expensive gear, I'd rather read those than articles about cheap stuff. I don't know if they didn't inhale enough in the sixties and seventies or if they're inhaling too much now.
Kirks right, if you pay the subscription price they will pass for bathroom reading material but don't take them too seriously.

I will simply say that i have WAY more respect for the "Captain" of Stereophile than i do for that of TAS. Given the "public disagreements" ( HA HA HA ) that i've had with some of the staff of Stereophile in the past and especially quite recently, that might seem kinda strange. Even if i don't agree with a LOT of what has been taking place over there for quite some time, i still think that Stereophile is by far "the lesser of two evils". Either way, i think that both mag's have LOADS of room for improvement. Sean
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In my opinion, TAS lately looks more like Stereophile used to be and Stereophile is deteriorating. Notice the last few issues - it is thinner and it seems with every issue another writer has left. Are the rats abandoning a sinking ship?

I'm suspicious of ANY commercial rag - they do indeed have to cater to their advertisers. (John Atkinson in a recent issue wrote some rather convoluted apologia for this approach.) You may want to puzzle out what he said. I found it tiresome.

With TAS you get utter subjectivity along with, IMO, Harry Pearson's pontifications. OTOH, J Holt moved over to Stereophile because he was concerned about the direction of TAS. And Gordon is someone whose judgement I've long respected. Make of that what you will. Stereophile gives you a balance of Atkinson's sometimes inpenetrable graphs with the musings of the reviewer, so one can at least attempt to pit the numbers against the subjective. Take your choice. In any case, you can see whether the numbers in any way correlate to the listening experiences of the reviewer.

Both of these journals wander way too far into the reaches of unaffordable equipment - at least for working class folk like me (vide Stereophile's recent reviews of the Boulder phono preamp and its sister preamp).

We tried Listener, but Art Dudley and his gang wore me out. He's a fine writer, but his conclusions are very suspect in my estimation. And he wears his biases on his sleeve. At least give him high marks for honesty ;>)

I've been at this a long time and have found no perfect journal. I have to trust my less than perfect ears; they usually serve me well.

I've read and subscribed to both at one time or another for more than 30 yrs(as well as most other hi-fi mags). I don't get much enjoyment from AS anymore, but Stereophile is still
fairly entertaining and much easier to read.

However, I don't buy into much that is written about the actual equipment. After all, if a reviewer suddenly can't hear the gross differences most claim to hear, nobody will be sending him all the nice toys you and I would love to play with. Oh, most are good writers, but that is there only claim to fame. All this crap about soundstaging, imaging, and such is mostly in there heads. After all, blind testing has pretty much proven that.

So what does make a difference? The recording, room acoustics, and loudspeakers will determine 99% of what you will hear. The other 1% I'll give 'em.

Btw, whatever happened to The Audio Critic? I think they still owe me an issue.

Jim