Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.

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.

@erik_squires,

Thanks for posting.

The entire article smacks of a desperate retreat against the vanguard forces of increasingly shared communal knowledge. Looks like Stereophile must have gotten complacent after all these years of churning out piffle on top of piffle.

However thanks to sites like this and others, (can I mention ASR?) an increasing number of today’s readers are far better informed than their brethren of yesteryear. The tide of knowledge has turned and there’s no putting the internet genie back in the bottle. The piffle must stop or else...

How about this for an initial plea for understanding?

’As the late Art Dudley wrote in one of his last columns, "From its acoustical beginnings, when two incompatible forms of physical media—Edison’s cylinders and Berliner’s flat discs—slugged it out for primacy, domestic audio has attracted an almost incalculable number of iconoclasts, heretics, mavericks, nonconformists, lone wolves, enfants terrible, and hidebound kooks.

Because the above are among my favorite people, I don’t have much of a problem with that state of affairs.’


No, of course you don’t, since your main directive in attracting as many advertisers as possible you can wallow in as much subjective twaddle as your readers will, sorry, used to permit.

Those intending to pay out large sums of money in search of sonic performance might have a lot of problems with this.

The article then goes on expound upon the crux of the matter here, the issue that’s bugging them the most as referenced in its title - ’Hoisted on your own petard?’


’It’s especially disheartening when narrow-minded online critics use one aspect of our coverage—our measurements—to attack the other side: our subjective judgments.’

Ouch! That’s what really hurts, isn’t it?
The fact that savvy readers are ignoring your subjective ramblings and obfuscations and using your own measurements to reach their OWN conclusions!!

To finish with, the author Jim Austin, offers up a final plea bargain to the reader.

’We’re providing a complete picture; the two halves make a whole. You don’t get that from our competition.

Broaden your mind. Seek perspective. Look at the big picture.’


He just forgets to add ’please, and pretty please!’

Face it Jim, the game is up. The broad picture, at least your version of it, has clearly very little value in today’s informed market.

Either you tell it like it is or dispense with what has been your main selling card for years - a decent set of technical measurements.

Not the final word in analytical data by any means, but as you say, more than some of your opposition.

Exactly how you will go about keeping your friends (and paying advertisers) happy in the future is not our concern. You need to keep in mind that your loyalty must primarily be to your readers who frequently place their trust in your words.

We understand you’re in a hard place now, having to chose sides (advertising revenue versus sales revenue), but that’s not the readers dilemna, is it?