Recommended components on Stereophile Magazine.

Bravo, Marco! Best post of the year, in my opinion.

Thanks, Joe!

I think it's human nature to need to make everything fit into some kind of black and white, better worse, Class A and everything else, us and them scenario. And boy do we love to have our opinions validated by others (except for Elizabeth, of course :-).

No one tries to measure and assign a set of numbers that serve as the be all and end all to things like upscale jewelry, ice cream, or handbags. So, why do we continually fight this battle in regards to high-end audio components?

I think there's the camp ("camp them") that believes that there is some kind of objective "truth" that should not be soiled by our nasty components lest we live under the delusion that we are actually listening to "real" music. They can be spotted chanting ritualistic verse about the sound engineer's intent, reproduction of square waves, and worshiping various authorities who know better than the average bear what music really sounds like. I'm pretty sure if someone came up with some machine that assigned numbers that they claimed quantified the quality of the taste of ice cream there would be a large contingent of people that actually bought into that and purchased only the ice cream that rated the best. It's sad that so many are willing to let others form an opinion that they adopt as their own based upon some kind of popularity agenda.

I ask myself should I put my finger to the left, no
I ask myself should I put my finger to the right, no
I say it really doesn't matter where I put my finger
Someone else will come along and move it
And it's always been the same
It's just a complicated game
-XTC

If you want to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when there was a small magazine that took no ads, appeared a little late sometimes and was staffed by committed audiophiles check out HIFICRITIC. Reviews and articles by Martin Colloms, Paul Messenger, Malcolm Stewart, Ben Duncan,Chris Bryant, Stan Curtis and others. Long reviews and measurements that never appeared in the old Stereophile. An article in the current issue examines the work of Miland Kunchur, a physicist at the Univ. of South Carolina who is doing fascinating research on how we hear. He has found that 75% of listeners can detect differences as short an 6 millionths of a second, which seems impossible but is the result of experiment.

one thing to keep in mind with respect to the review world is what their drivers are. Im not an expert on stereo magazines or review sites but I do know quite alot on the motorcycle review world and I'm willing to bet they are very similar. In the motorcycle review world everyone thinks that advertising dollars drive the review. This is to say that Bike World or whatever looses money from ads if they print a bad review. The reality is that the ad revenue is a factor but the real leverage is access to test subjects, in this case motorcycles. Imagine is H****a were to withhold test bikes the review would be at a massive disadvantage. Wanna bet the stereo world has similar drivers? The vendors also know when their stuff is getting reviewed most likely so putting an ad in that magazine makes lots of sense.