Stereophile Class A tables

I can tell you of a time Valin was completely unprofessional regarding reviewing my product called the Vibraplane. He received the unit and within hrs called me saying it was the next best thing other than sliced bread! He wrote a remarkable review but after I requested payment (below cost) he never paid so we had the unit picked up. Surprise surprise when the review never came out in TAS.

(Dealer disclaimer)

Getting back to the original topic - stereophile class a ratings aren't too bad, but place the grading relative to the reviewer and their preferences.
ie. a class A component for one reviewer who likes a warm sound, may well be a class C for another reviewer who likes a cooler system sound. Most reviwers place according to their prejudices, they may try and say otherwise, and of course some components float everyones' boat whereas others such as NAIM or KONDO polarise listeners

The biggest problem I have with those compilations in Stereophile is that
they are based on a range of individual reviews, some of which are dated,
and don't represent actual comparisons of equipment, so any one category
can represent a variety of equipment evaluations by different reviewers at
different times that really don't really represent a comprehensive,
comparative
evaluation.
Far more informative, to the extent I'm going to rely on a professional
review (which is a separate question),would be a shoot out among, say, 4
or 5 preamps in a controlled environment (recognizing that there would
have to be changes in the 'reference system' to accomodate necessary
synergies, and a sort of roundtable review, by a panel of reviewers present
in the same room, using the same set-up(s)). Obviously, that's far too time
consuming for a magazine to do on a regular basis (though at times, it has
been done). I recall a shoot out HiFi+ did a number of years ago with then
top level line stages which, in the comparison remarks, were in my
estimation, pretty informative, since I owned one of the pieces at the time,
and the remarks were pretty close to my longer term experience in using
the one piece.
As M. Fremer said in another thread here, it's 'informed entertainment.'
Perhaps like reading a 'best movies' or 'best books' of the year, recognizing
that some of the reviews are from earlier years.