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TAS is a nice present for an Audiophile you don't like

It's so funny that both Gordon Holt and Harry Pearson came to strongly disapprove of the magazines they founded and ran. Of the two, TAS is far worse imo, presenting company-written copy as editorial content.

^^ Gordon Holt was a really good reviewer. His reviews guided me to buy a pair of Acoustat III's and then a pair of Acoustat IV's. Amazing speakers when driven with tons of power. 

I stopped reading it a long time ago but not because they only review expensive gear but because I didn't get anything out of those reviews. I read Car and Driver from time to time, including about Porsches, Aston Martins etc. The true supercar is custom Swedish Koenigseg, only $2 millions. That said, if you really know how to drive, and few do, your modest tuned BMW or old Porsche will fly past those yuppies in those cars. Many people in the US, Asia and even Europe and Russia can afford very expensive stuff. To put it another way - this kind of money is not a problem for them at all.

He sure was, oregonpapa, inventing much of the Audiophile vocabulary still in use today. His first priority in the reproduction of music was accurate instrumental and vocal timbre, the lack of "vowel" coloration. Gordon's insistence that Hi-Fi evaluation and critique begin with that hurdle is considered "fascistic" by Art Dudley, a current reviewer I like a lot. Art considers accurate timbre to be just one of the equally-important jobs of Hi-Fi equipment, being in fact of less importance to Art than a component's abilities at reproducing the temporal aspects of a recording---the timing, "touch" (as he refers to the physical sound of a player's fingers on the strings of a guitar, for instance), and scale (the size of the instrument(s) and the recording venue).