Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.

+1 Millercarbon

I gave up on that post and greatly appreciate your summary!

Buy what you like hearing. Measurements are measurements. Ratings are ratings. Neither of them are a convincing factor. The only convincing factor is what you hear...

Stereophile are forever beholden to the churn and hype of products-for-sale. They exist to help companies sell new stuff, and while they have developed standards based on subjective listening experience and engineering know how, they can never abandon their core mission: to celebrate or denigrate somehow, the “consumability” of the new thing for sale.

People say it all the time: namely, that the improvements made in various elements of an audio system are either imaginary or incremental. Given all the equipment which has been produced so far, if there was never any more “progress” and all we could lay our hands on was the existing range of options, surely there would be an adequate number of combinations to keep our quest for the absolute sound alive and well until the sun burns out.

I like this post...

I cannot imagine that any piece of gear will sound like his measurements say they will....Sound is hearing experience...

I cannot imagine that an audio system has a sound of his own, when it is "off" in the box in the warehouse by virtue of the different measures of his components... He must be out of the audio laboratory and "on" and then in a particular different electrical grid, in a different particular acoustical room, in a different particular resonant vibrations states of his own treated or not treated against that....Then it has a particular "sound" for one pair of ears not the same for others one....

I cannot imagine that a reviewer or a seller or any manufacturer, will oblige himself and will do a duty to reveal these inconvenient truths (for the sale pitch) that an audio system will sound vastly different in relation to the way these embeddings would or would not be adressed before you bought his 10,000 dollars amplifier or dac?
Will you be pleased to learn that day that his perfect engineering gear is not enough by themself to create Hi-Fi experience? Asking the question is answering it.... :)

Reviewers and manufacturers are, willing or not, sellers....

They cannot insist on the truth of their business not because they are liars, they are mostly not, but because an audio system S.Q. exist only in a precise particular state in a particular environment, for specific ears...And they must promote the only thing and facts they know of: the alleged superiority of their design in the audio laboratory or for their own taste, room, house, experiences, etc...

Is it not?

The key problem in audio is never adressed in magazine and if it is, they cannot focus on that key problem, because they must sells the piece of gear like a definitive solution...They must put the key problem under the rug so to speak.... The key problem is complex and triple problems that no single piece of gear can solve on his own ... :)

The key problem is how to embed, mechanically, electrically and acousatically an audio system, in a way that his sound would be optimal?

Is it not evident?

Some people, due to a lack of imagination, which is tied to a lack of cognitive speed or range, tend to drift into diktats, papal bulls and rule books.

As they can’t do the range, flavors, nor the risk ---of the intelligence shuffle.

That thing which comes to the forefront, when some are out of their range. The animal thing of knowing how safe they are.

The body, the emotions, the hindbrain... comes to the forefront, it forces the mind to retreat, when it can’t intellectually reach a thing. Danger!

So they get ’factual’, and ’linear’ and ’law-book’ oriented. They consult the biblical texts and lawbooks of their area of trade or ’expertise’, as they don’t have the range to be in the field, inventing or perusing the living moving always changing -edge of it all.

Oh yes. they, generally speaking -absolutely HATE the people who can.

They hate them for minimal sin (of all the sins of the intelligent and capable) where they can’t cognate the essence of what intelligence does or how it moves. They can’t decipher it and it’s not in the book.

Intelligence, much to it’s chagrin, to keep the entire thing moving or flowing.... is forced to be kind, in return, seemingly...forever. The endless beatings from the lack of intelligence. It’s called an act of humanity.


Some days, it wears thin.

@cdamiller5
"Just get what sounds good to you" was how I used to approach audio, food, film, etc. It’s such a simple, seemingly irrefutable bit of common sense.
I’ve given up that bit of "common sense" because I have found it partially false.
I have not given up following my own instincts and tastes, but people able to hear more (or differently) than me have pointed out what I was missing.
They were friends and sometimes dealers. In all cases that mattered, they helped me discover something I couldn’t experience before but now was empowered to. That’s what good critics (amateur or professional) do — they teach you how to listen (taste, see, think) differently. And in my own case, I’d say they *improved* my listening.