Stereophile "coverage"

Two times a year they do their recommended components nonsense, now they have records to die for, good for one more issue, car stereo should be next, then their is a need for an annual product listing (October Audio, remember?), maybe an annual music recap issue would be good, that's six issues, home theater,seven. We only need ideas for five more issues and we'll be able to recycle content with minor changes every year. Cut and paste, baby.

You got that right, Steteophile is a joke! Just look at Audible Illusions and Transcendent class A reviewed but gone like magic from this years list (No advertising can't be the reason can it ?? ) Look at SoundStage on the net for honest reviews from real people who do not owe their careers to advertising giants. Also The Absolute Sound is great and just kills Stereophile for info.

What do we expect for a magazine which costs us $1.50 per issue? Every other month it is Krell or Levinson plastered all over the cover in a way which dares to surpass the most garish ads you can find inside the magazine. This entire magazine, including the articles, is an ad. As for this issue, the $37000 Krell speaker with inaudible deep bass and, if you look at the graphs, with the rolled off treble, is not quite perfect, but at least it has excellent fit and finish! Please! They loved that Sony SS-9 speaker which they reviewed. They said it was nearly flawless. I heard it at the New York show at the 5 channel SACD demo and while it wasn't horrible, it certainly wasn't memorable. They definitely did get one thing right about it. The speaker was thin sounding.

Stereophile continues to sink to ever lower depths. It reviews the same old manufacturers' stuff while ignoring new, innovative or even classic and highly respected equipment in favor of nearly, if not completely exclusively, those manufacturers who advertise with them. At this point, it would appear that they don't even care that we the readers even can plainly see their strategy. Needless to say, I won't be renewing my subscription.

I sold all my Stereophiles a while back and didnt renew my subscription.I got frequent mail from them to come back and finally gave in when I saw I could get a year for $11.95 I guess its worth a buck an issue and it will keep them off my back for a while.

I can't help but think that a lot of the problem is that there is a kind of doldrums going on now in equipment-land. Noone knows if any of the new formats will succeed - there's little indication that any will - but the uncertainty has the effect of chilling the existing format. Add to that a cooling economy , the fairly lame state of 'popular' (read: dominated by huge multinational companies) music, the huge success of MP3 and home theater. So what's a poor magazine like Stereophile to do? I agree this issue was about a 10 minute read, but it seems to me that if your premise is that 2 channel is just fine, you're left with a hell of a lot of gear that's been out for a while which does the job beautifully (no news there) and the sad but moot discussion of SACD vs. DVDaudio (moot because neither will likely succeed). I think that better information on these issues (1.what equipment, old and new, works best and has the most value? and 2.are the new products any good?) can be found in discussion forums like this or audioasylum, taking things with a great many grains of salt of course (look out for contributors with an ulterior motive).