Reviewing the Reviewers

I agree with much of what you say Detlof. However I think you underestimate how many people feel betrayed by the true motivations of most of the mainstream rags. It didn't use to be the way it now is. There was more integrity when there was little or no advertising. Sure the magazines need to make money and the mainstream ones make more than ever at least Stereophile does. I myself feel that it is a good value overall. You get good technical info on the products ala Audio. I do feel that their reviews for the most part are to the contrary of enlightening. They are so generic cookie cutter in their descriptions that you could easily apply one review to any other. Is this the fault of the reviewer or are there editorial lines that the reviewer must stay within? My guess is the latter. I would rather see more honesty in how they really hear and feel about a product and I seldom get a sense of that.

Of course they tell us to use our own ears and ultimately that is what we must do. The problem that I see is the allegiance that the mags have to the Major Manufacturers that get much more exposure because they advertise more. I find this very self-serving and not in the best interest of the readership or hi-end audio as a whole. They also do not compare products. There used to be more of this. This is one feature of the Absolute Sound that I really do like. Small manufacturers that can't afford to advertise may make it to the recommended component list but don't stay too long if they don't advertise. This is really a very calculated format issue that is more in the interest of the manufacturers than the readership.

And that brings us to the real beef I have and one area I totally agree with Salvadore on, their Recommended Component List. It is little more than a marketing tool to sell more copy and appease manufacturers', killing 2 birds with one stone. The readers seem to like it and the advertising is heavier than ever in those issues. I do not feel it is critical enough of the components that are selected. What with A+, A etc. Maybe I'm in the minority but I personally find it almost useless. I have listened to some of their “A” rated components and there is NO way that they should be included among the best, period, IMHO. Except I don't feel too humble in my adamancy on that point!!

The best parallel that comes to mind is the triad of legislators, lobbyists and voters. The legislators need the lobbyists to raise enough money to be elected by the voters. Yet they are often beholden to the interests of the lobbyists which may be at conflict with the best interests of the voters. The manufacturers need the magazines to get exposure for their products that the reader wants. The magazines are beholden to both their readership and the manufacturer. Satisfy both needs with the ultimate realization that by balancing both, they will make money. I feel the balance has gradually been moving over to the manufacturers and the readership has become little more than a commodity in achieving the primary goal of increasing the bottom line. Capitalism at its true essence. There is no reason to believe it should be otherwise. Your allegiance is going to be stronger to the customer that is the greatest source of your revenue. So can we "trust" a magazine to be completely honest in the interest of its readership? No we can't. All we can be is entertained and enjoy it for what value it does offer. And when those values becomes lost on the readership at large or if the market changes faster than the magazine can adjust to, they just go out of business.

And to the last point. JG Holt found the magazine on a principle that is still remembered by some. And it wasn't about making a lot of money. The magazine was established by an audiophile for audiophiles. Maybe it is expecting too much for things to remain the same but it appears that the ideals of this publication and its goals have pretty much been lost over the past 15 years. It sure is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm to me. A gradual shifting of allegiances in the name of Capitalism over Ideals. I will not use the word corrupt, a strong word and one not to use lightly. My final .02 cents on this thread.

Tubegroover, I am very grateful for the time and energy you took, to write this thoughtful and very well considered post....and I could not agree more. I've read TAS from its very beginning and have experienced that "gradual shifting of allegiances in the Name of Capitalism over Ideals", as you so aptly put it, with sadness and discomfort. But "the times they are a-changing" and true idealsm, especially as regards values like truth, meaning, beauty are becoming more and more of a private thing to hold up, cherish and work upon. Hence I tend to feel, that we must be weary of any self annointed gurus pointing the way to whatever nirvana, including that of audio, but must learn to think and judge for ourselves, with the help of other idealists of course¨and this platform here seems just right for this purpose. These were the ruminations behind my somewhat emotional post above in the sense of: Come on guys, things are what they are, no use crying over spilt milk, lets grow up, make ourselves knowledgeable, share with each other. There are better things to do than to lament about things, we are unable to change. If we cannot better the mags, at least we can better ourselves. If they've betrayed their original ideals, we don't have to at all, because as hobbyists we are free, without having to face conflicting interests , which probably sooner or later would grind down our ideals as well. We have, contrary to the mags, what in German is so aptly called "Narrenfreiheit"...the freedom of the fools and the innocent, because its our hobby,perhaps even our passion, but not our way to make a living. If it were, I wonder how long it would take us, until also we, the righteous, had at least to question our ideals by just plain necessity.
No Tubegroover, I realise full well, how many people feel justly betrayed by the mainstream rags. But I still maintain, that exactly those people, instead of endlessly complaining about that deplorable fact, should try to become independent and learn for themselves...and haven't we found a good platform here to do just that? In my humble opinion, the loss of idealism, the "whoredom" as has has been said above, of those rags, is a chance for us to grow and to learn. Regards,

Tubegroover and Detlof, agreed in principle. You seem to be seasoned audiophiles, but what about the young, the newbees? They will need guidance by necessity, will avidly read the mags...until finally they too will feel betrayed. You Detlof, probably went through this stage quite a while ago. I agree with your conclusion, but if disillusionment is still fresh, you as a shrink should actually know best, that there is nothing but anger first.

Touché Ka, I humbly must bow to your insight. It was probably the halfconscious reminiscence of my old anger, when I saw the figures I admired, first sway and then fail, which made me now so impatient....and unjust. Apologies to anyone offended.

Fremer's response to Salvatore illustrates how backward (reactionary) Fremer is when it comes to exploiting his own social position. His readiness to form judgements and protect his own interests is, as in all people concerned with status, far prompter toward those beneath them (and one of the purposes of his response is to situate Salvatore below him) than toward those higher up. It must be a good deal writing for Stereophile (a better deal than Salvatore has in writing his web page or any of us have writing our posts at audiogon and our gratis reviews at other audio sites). What strikes me is that Fremer for the most part is unable to give an account of the social function of his writing. This is paralleled by the fact that Stereophile contributors in general are not able to publicly reflect to any significant effect on their function in their dealings with manufacturers (except for the manufacturer's reply column). There are undoubtedly somewhere in the world reviewers who take a naive view of their own activities and who genuinely believe that their only moral task is to distinguish between good components and bad (some of the names of these reviewers were already mentioned in this thread), and those that believe that their only commercial task is to distinguish components that will sell from those that will not. In general, however, it is probably the business people at Stereophile that have a clearer idea of the circles to whom Stereophile is selling than the individual Stereophile contributor has of the audience for whom they write. Fremer, or any other Stereophile contributor is really in no position to control all of Stereophile. And who else should do it? Not the reading public; the activities of Stereophile fall outside all of our fields of vision (we may be interested in some of the same components as them, but we work outside Stereophile). This leaves the audio retailers and manufacturers as a court of appeal. But it is almost superfluous to mention how problematic, irresponsible and secret retailer and manufacturer control of the audio press must be.
If one wanted to fully critique the audio press, one would need a statistical survey of the capital at work in the audio publishing world. What is the source of these capital sums? Specifically, how much capital has migrated into a publisher from a given manufacturer in advertising fees and "corporate hospitality" (dinners, gifts, free reviewer samples, etc.)? On the other hand, what does an audio publication supply to the audio market for this manufacturer? It would be a short step from there to combine these questions and investigate whether, when capital flows into a publisher, it is directed at specific customer strata and trends that correspond to, say, SACD as opposed to DVD, or certain manufacturers as opposed to other ones, etc. It would be interesting also to see the sales figures in different markets for the main products advertised by or positively reviewed by a publisher. Of greatest interest would be information about the rating of a component and the advertising charges for it in the same magazine (Salvatore has repeatedly pointed to collusion on this level); likewise a picture of the relation between commercial success (sales figures) and literary succcess (critical reception in the press).
Of course, there are valuable components that fail to sell, and that a good publisher well nevertheless wish to sell not only as a matter of honor. But of course a common--and cynical--view of publishing is to see it as selling worthless components that succeed in selling only with its help. Another way to see audio publishing is as a combined operation, consisting of organized patronage and a lottery, in which every new component is a number and the reading public acts as banker. From the player's (in other words, the publisher's) winnings, a part is to be used to bet on numbers (components) that look splendid and significant but that scarcely figure into the gambling of the reading public. How much the player (the publisher) can bet on these numbers of course depends on their winnings on other more successful numbers (components). Of course, a publisher has to have a close relationship with specific writers--it does not need to follow a particular line--in order to maintain contact with a reading public. Obvious though it is, it is striking that in America, which possesses a number of clearly defined audio publications--Stereophile, the Absolute Sound, Ultimate Audio, etc.--very few attempts have been made (excepting Salvatore's and a few others) to undertake a systematic critique of these institutions. Yet this would be the only way to measure the abyss that separates big publications from smaller underground publications and those internet webzines that appear and disappear by the dozen every year, only to be replaced by similar smaller publications that open up in their wake. A systematic critique would also be a way to measure the gap that divides some of these big magazines from their disillusioned readers. It may lend additional weight to this already lengthy, abstract and unoriginal reflection if audio publishers came to see that the leaders among them will benefit more in terms of honor and profit from a sound criticism of their activities than from a socially reactionary response to one of their reviewer's (here: Fremer's response to Salvatore). Only experiece will enable us to discover the benefits of such a critique.