Rank Stereophile, & why no Von Schweikert reviews

I have to admit, the music reviews in both TAS and Stereophile seem to be improving in quality and quantity.

The only way a magazine could ever be completely unbiased would be to go the "Consumer Reports" route and not accept any ads. It's probably not going to happen. In the meantime we have to read between the lines of the reviews where the author's true thoughts are often hidden in the guise of "damning /a product/ with faint praise".

In response to Jax2, I agree that you can "read between the lines" - but I shouldn't have to! I appreciate the ability of a magazine like Hi-Fi Choice to give many of it's reviews only a 3 out of 5 star rating, and not be shy about voicing complaints. That is what I pay a subscription for.

And for every single piece of gear that Stereophile reviews, they should stop telling me:

"unheard of at the price"
"offers extraordinary value for money"
"a much lower price than you'd expect to pay for a similar design"
"hard to fault within its price range"
"is a bargain at $XXXX"
"better than anything I've heard that's cheaper, and cheaper than anything I've heard that's better"
"I've never heard anything near this price and size"

I mean C'mon already! If EVERYTHING is a bargain, then nothing is. It is all then simply fairly priced. If Stereophile ever finds an issue with an aspect of a product, then they always sugar-coat it with "but great for the price". They are insulting our intelligence already. ( But I guess the subscription and advertising dollars show that insulting the reader's intelligence pays)

"Do the reviewers actually go out after ANY of these components they're writing about, or do they all come to the reviewer, or show up at some show the reviewer attended?"
Yes, we do go after some and sometimes succeed.

"There are reviewers reading both here and on AudioAsylum...do they ever get a clue from those places that some specific component may be worthy of their attention and go and seek out that manufacturer for a review sample?"
Sure. It still has to interest me, personally.

Kal

"Stereophile" will review direct sales products (with less than five dealers, obviously) if they have a money back return policy.

Hyperion has certainly been mentioned in various "Stereophile" show reports. I can't remember if there was a full review, but it would be easy to find out at the website.

"Stereophile" has exposed a lot of problem equipment in the last couple of years: The Klipsch boxes, some borderline malfunctioning electronics, inexplicably "damaged" Audio Physik speakers. The idea expressed above that there's no poor engineering or poor values in the kind of equipment they'll look at is just wrong. Even so, I agree most reviews end up in generic over-praising.