The Absolute Sound vs Stereophile

There there are few similarities between the TAS of old (pre 1998ish) and today. Reviews today are, generally all positive, significantly shorter, and most significantly, have very little comparison to one or more competing products. You might get the occasional sentence saying x is more polite the y or x is a better value than a,b and c. I find these to be throw away platitudes. With no substantive (multi paragraph) comparisons taking place and general happiness, reviews are like cotton candy - easy to digest but not filling.   

To to experience the difference, open a review from the 90s and see for yourself!  The difference is quite amazing. 

I used to take both but did not renew either starting around 2003. They had both become less and less relevant to my interests, which were primarily the music, not the gear.

Friends loan me issues from time to time and nothing I have seen makes me want to subscribe again.

Now give me the Tracking Angle again and I'd be on it in a flash.

Was just having this conversation with my brother a few weeks ago.  It's all him -haw.  I don't see negative reviews from the big review machines anymore.  No longer see meaningful quantification of a product in relation to its direct competitors.  So many are rated as a value greater than their price tag, that its ridiculous. Everything seems to be evaluated as worth comparing and listening too, or a value, or performs at multiples of its price tag, that its meaningless.  This is very similar to what began happening to the automotive  press in the late 90s as well.  What i see there now is so much worse, with deliberate deceptions, than the audio press we are discussing on this thread.  The primary press money is made from the advertisers, not us buying the subscription, so who do you think they are writing for?...or more fairly said, who do you think the editors and publishers are concerned about when they pre-read a review from one of their writers before letting it go to print, or on their website?  

There are a few key things I look for in reviews now.  If the reviewer makes it part of their reference system, than that product is serious in my book.  Next thing I look for is when reviewers from 2 or more venues make the same, VERY specific, observations of certain qualities of a product...that's evidencing to me.  The downside of that, is the smaller, yet amazing companies, don't often get 2 or more reviews of a particular product.  So, then ofcourse there is AudiogoN and Steve Hoffman.

i used to read 'stereo review' magazine since 1971 to it's retirement. anybody have any thoughts on this magazine?

I used to peruse and collect both, but I decided to stop reading audio magazines when a particular issue of one of them featured not one, not two, but THREE reviews of individual components that each retailed for $45,000 or more. I don’t disapprove of anyone who likes to read such reviews, but it made me realize that those two magazines just no longer had anything to do with me. 

I don’t miss them and I’m happy I had the courage to make the change.