$4500 amp beat out the Tenor OTL in the latest TAS

If I remember correctly, when TAS was in its "undergound" infancy they did not take advertisement from any manufacturer. In fact HP felt strongly about this and when the decision was made that for financial reasons manufacturer's advertising dollars would be needed, there was substantial angst among the editorial staff, HP included. Along with subjective evaluation of equipment, a fundamental feature of TAS was its independence from manufacturer derived advertising dollars. Equipment for review was obtained from dealers, end users, and occasionally the manufacturer. If a company objected to the equipment review they had recourse to an open letter in a subsequent issue of TAS. Well times change, but when there is potential conflict of interest or "quid pro quo" a healthy dose of skepticism is always in order.

Today I visited two stores which carry 'Antique Sound Labs'. Neither store seamed very interested in letting me listen to any of the products. One of them even had the more expensive [lower power] amp. Both stores made the same comment 'incredible midrange, lacking near the extremes. This is not to say the hurricanes aren't great.

Being of lower cost, maybe the profit is insufficient to warrant selling?.

A side note. While at one of the stores I picked up an XRCD, good golly folks, even my modest system blew me away.

I can state unequivocally that the dealers referred to by cousinbillyl were not talking about the Hurricanes and the Hurricanes most assuredly, and unlike many other tube amplifiers, are not rollled off at either of the frequency extremes. At a conservative 200 WPC they rock. 8 KT 88's per side are utilized at considerably below the max WPC that could have been derived from those 8 KT 88's. Powerful, detailed and extended are they, throwing a huge and airy soundstage.

The corruption in the reviewing process of magazines like Stereophile is not only in the superlatives they praise on new products, but on the absence of reviews of products they should review. A good example is the loudspeakers from VMPS. According to a good many Audiogoners and other fellows, their VMPS 40 speaker for 5000 $ a pair sound as good as a lot of speakers Stereophile likes to praise, and which cost 20,000 dollars, or more. VMPS even won a prize for Best High-End product at the CES 2002. You did not find a single word about this fact in the Stereophile show report, much less a review. The same is true for the cable manufacturer LAT International, which offers much better value than a lot of manufacturers Sterophile and the other mags praise. This process of excluding news and reviews is true for all high-end-mags not only in the US. Examples? The largest European HiFi-magazine, Audio of Germany, once came out with a cover story on speakers of a new firm: Audioplay. The speakers cost 180 dollars each, were round, made of pasteboard, but sounded better than speakers which sold for 1000 dollars. The result at the next HiFi-show was that the new, factory-selling manufacturer was showered with customers. The competitors put such a pressure on the publishers of Audio that their sister magazine Stereoplay ran a grotesque critique of the speakers. Audioplay, the loudspeaker-maker, later came out with more amazing speakers, one of them being a reference-model, which ist still produced, sells for 1300 dollars per pair, and sounds as good as a lot of speakers four or six times their price. Not a single speaker was ever reviewed by any German mag - they had all learnt the lesson. Newer examples? The Berlin-based producer Funk Tonstudiotechnik came out with a preamp for 500 dollars, that reportedly puts to shame preamps for 2000 dollars. Not one of the larger German mags has run a review, the most you can expect is a brief mentioning in the "Industry News"

Hey, I'd buy from a manufacturer named "Funk Tonstudiotechnik"...

Not that I can really know what goes on, but I would point out that the mags also often ignore reviewing some of the most expensive models from some well-known companies. This might simply be attibutable to the makers not supplying review samples, but one can never tell how they go about deciding what gets covered. Speaking of things German, last month's Stereophile featured a review of a German DAC with a high price tag that has never been advertised in the magaizine, and that I had never heard of before...