Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.

@erik_squires I see your point, Erik. If I’ve got it right, you’re saying that because there is an influential standard out there by Toole, it would serve Stereophile and its readers if they simply included a sentence or two in any review where a speaker design is intentionally heterodox. This would help "locate" the decisions behind that speaker design. The best film reviewers do such things, too — very helpful.

@ebm

Who really cares what they think.

I’m new to the hobby relative to many here. Are you saying that Stereophile is *not* influential on other magazines, distributors, dealers, customers? Or that they should not be?

What issue of the magazine are you talking about?  Gimme the date, or the volume-issue number.

The date of the article is July 15, 2020. It's on the link provided.

Jeez, @erik_squires you used to seem like such an intelligent well-grounded bloke and now you seemingly have come off the rails (over the last few months). Whether you know it or not, that is not the point of Jim Austen's piece. Not at all. 
Perhaps I can break it down for you. He is commenting upon the divergence between the mainstream and the nonconformists. He is not complaining. S'Phile is not complaining. As the new editor, it his job in part to write a thought provoking op-ed piece here and there. That is what he did. He writes well and is more intelligent/knowledgeable (yes, two different things)-in my estimation-than most audio writers and editors. He is a very worthy successor to the also excellent John Atkinson. 
Perhaps you missed his effort-which was no coincidence-to pay tribute to Art Dudley who for as long as I can remember ignored the mainstream and went with what made him happy and made sense to his senses. 
FWIW, the yin and yang of S'Phile currently are Mike Fremer and Victor Jason Serinus at one extreme and Herb Reichert. Art was no match for the off-the-beaten-path nature of all that is Herb. He has gone so far into the pricker bushes that I don't even read his columns any more. 
At Axpona '19 I listened repeatedly to one room with CH Precision gear and Magico's driven by all digital and the Border Patrol/TriodeWireLabs/Volti room. That too is a pretty good example of the divergence that Jim Austen was writing about in the column you so misinterpret. Look up the S'Phile review-including the measurements-of the Border Patrol DAC. If you believe measurements of a DAC have significance, than what I heard in the Border Patrol/Volti room must have been delusional on my part. 

I agree w erik to an extent; on the other hand I don’t :) The part I disagree with is erik’s later comment that speakers should be judged based on the designers goal. I don’t give designers that latitude. It’s my firm belief that all speakers should be designed with the goal of reproducing the signal fed to it ... with precise fidelity to that signal in all aspects, frequency,dynamics,phase,etc.