Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.

jpwarren58,

For normal people yes, but we’re audiophiles.

We don’t mind paying exorbitant prices for those loudspeakers that will be guaranteed to induce headaches.

There is a belief that beyond a certain price loudspeakers can start to sound very odd.

In my experience, large expensive loudspeakers tend to impress with huge dynamics and scale (Avantgarde Trio XDs!), but sometimes at the expense of a homogeneous sound.

Even worse, some of them can have what appears to be serious treble/sibilance issues.

You only have to look at the numbers of bad reports regarding some of the Magico and Wilson models.

Everything suggests that they must be excellent transducers, (years of R&D and cost no object materials) yet they seem do something that some folks cannot stand.

Assuming that those people are voicing genuine concerns, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t, either those speakers are doing something seriously wrong, or it may be they are simply too revealing in laying 'poor' recordings to waste (by poor recordings we mean 95% of released output between 1950 and the present).

More to the point perhaps, recordings that were made using entirely different loudspeakers to the ones being played back on.

Some people believe that you need similar speakers for playback as to the ones that were used in the original recording.

Not an option for most of us when we look at all the different loudspeakers used for monitoring in different studios around the world.

You only have to think how different vintage Tannoy studio monitors sound to vintage JBL studio monitors to realise the problem of audio's notorious circle of confusion.

Hence the need to find an acceptable compromise between the hardware and the software. 

I was lucky with my speakers...

Tannoy dual gold for 40 years...(400 canadian dollars in 1975)

Now for the last 5 years, Mission cyrus 781....( 50 dollars bought used)...

They are very different but the 2 are musical, with more power to fill the house with the Tannoy and a very subtle equilibrium with the Mission... I cannot compare them because they were in vastly different rooms, and connected to very different audio system... but i loved the two dearly and loved the Cyrus, the best Mission ever create...

British rules!

I think you're safe as far as being informed, Erik. "Its" is the word you were looking for in your thread title.

Every audio journalist's dilemma must be whether to tell the truth, or to 'wriggle around' in the hope of being entertaining whilst not getting slapped by the advertising department. Sometimes they might even manage to do all three, but alas not every product can be the outstanding one.

If Austin does decide to go further and dispense altogether with those pesky technical measurements, which can only get in the way of good fiction writing, then he could also risk sinking the ship. I've no doubt that those measurements are the main, perhaps even only reason why many still subscribe.

It would no doubt be a big gamble, but then again the magazine's founder J. Gordon Holt was not averse to taking a few risks himself. However, as Austin points out, these are different times, and Holt's philosophy of subjectivism is under increasing pressure now.

On the other hand, "Holt's Law," the theory that the better the recording, the worse the musical performance—and vice versa, sadly still seems relevant today. 

We all know Stereophile only exists for marketing purposes, pushing products to potential buyers, thus keeping dealers and manufacturers happy. But marketing demands readers. Lots of them.

Austin's predecessor, John Atkinson was more like an oiled up wrestler, slippery enough to ever avoid being pinned down or forced to submit in the face of hard evidence or fact. Deception by omission and obfuscation was simply a way of life for him.

It now seems as if Austin, like his predecessor, also has no intention to protect, inform, or steer customers away from bad products or manufacturers. By his own words, the opposite is more likely in fact.

Good work Jim. But hey, you don't need to get too despondent, there is a way out here. It's rather simple too.

Instead of all this schizophrenic contortion trying to please incompatible demands, why not just drop the act and admit to all and sundry that your magazine is very little more than a work of pure fiction? 

That way you won't hurt any newbs, and since most of the long timers already know, you might even sleep easier.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/hoisted-your-own-petard

i guess i shouldn't of bought my 100 lb.Speakers