As usual, Almarg comes to the rescue with his indisputable reasonableness; in this case, helping to turn the tide of the usual reviewer bashing which is partly what I like to call simple reviewer envy (all that great gear!).
Perhaps the bashers are younger than I and some of the other supporters and are not familiar with the TAS of its heyday; and I will concede that the TAS (and HP's contributions) of the last several years was not on the same level. IMO, the contribution of TAS and HP in particular has done as much (in a positive way) for the health of the industry as just about anyone else including the great equipment designers. His relentless adherence to a standard influenced these great designers to continually improve their designs. No other reviewer that I can think of was as adamant about the concept of the gear always being in the service of the music. Read some of those back issues and you will learn not only about the concept of faithfulness to the sound of live acoustic instruments, but also (via the infamous "surveys") everything from the great concert halls around the world to the great pipe organs of the world; not to mention an incredible (for an audio mag) number of discussions about music theory and pedagogy, and the "Super Lists" of great recordings. Additionally, he did more to create a vocabulary for discussing audio matters than anyone else that I can think of. I think the bashers are taking a whole lot for granted and not giving credit where credit is due.
Perhaps the bashers are younger than I and some of the other supporters and are not familiar with the TAS of its heyday; and I will concede that the TAS (and HP's contributions) of the last several years was not on the same level. IMO, the contribution of TAS and HP in particular has done as much (in a positive way) for the health of the industry as just about anyone else including the great equipment designers. His relentless adherence to a standard influenced these great designers to continually improve their designs. No other reviewer that I can think of was as adamant about the concept of the gear always being in the service of the music. Read some of those back issues and you will learn not only about the concept of faithfulness to the sound of live acoustic instruments, but also (via the infamous "surveys") everything from the great concert halls around the world to the great pipe organs of the world; not to mention an incredible (for an audio mag) number of discussions about music theory and pedagogy, and the "Super Lists" of great recordings. Additionally, he did more to create a vocabulary for discussing audio matters than anyone else that I can think of. I think the bashers are taking a whole lot for granted and not giving credit where credit is due.