Stereophile "coverage"

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).

Well said Musicslug.

I liked the coverage of the Denon receiver, the computer speakers, and especially the sound cards - I had no real interest in purchasing the first two, and only a modest interest in the last one, but I was very interested to see how experienced reviewers compared these to the usual fare, since they don't usually get coverage in a way that they can be compared to the higher-end stuff.

When they put the Denon receiver on the cover and took all the heat for it (not from me), they said they wanted to grab more people's eyes, draw them into picking up and hopefully buying / reading the magazine - extend the reach of the hobby. Great, makes sense, I'm all for it. Now you've got some interested newcomers and you shift into your alter-ego and produce an issue with nothing reviewed under $8K. I'm still reading because I was already reading, but anybody who you happened to snag with your coverage of the Denon is scratching their head and re-confirming that audiophiles are completely out of touch. Sam's space was filled with a rant about how terrible it is that anyone would even consider surround sound (something you might have wanted the Denon for), but more importantly was NOT filled with the usual coverage of something considerably more affordable along with his obvious enjoyment of same. Fremer's column was coverage of the show, which necessarily meant brief coverage of very high-priced analog gear so, again, nothing a newcomer would immediately relate to.

Maybe they're just searching, trying new things and seeing what is well received, what isn't, etc. I'm sure it's tough times to be an audio magazine and I'm glad to see them trying different things. But I also think they're aware of what they're doing and the type of reaction they're going to get, and given the number of instances they provide of things they have to know are going to draw criticism, I have to assume they enjoy it. -Kirk