Most annoying Stereo magazine claim

How about the truly nauseating "yin" v. "yang" comparisons that some reviewers pass off as valuable ?

I always laugh when I browse a copy of What Hi-Fi Magazine. No component gets worse than 3 stars no matter how bad it is. Most of them get 5 stars, and then there is 5 gold stars which is higher then just 5 stars. Higher than 5 gold stars is 5 stars with an "Editor's Choice". Then when you notice that the magazine is 90% advertising you see why the rating system is the way it is.

I'm with Revvrun on the phrase, "jaw dropping". Then there are those who take it even further by commenting on how, after listening to some discs through said piece of miraculous machinery, they are "...picking their jaw up off the floor". Seems to me that it'd be hard to trust a critic's opinion who does critical listening with their head on the floor...?

I don't understand Stereophile's Class ratings. For example, with amps, there is a $1500 Class A amp and megabuck Class A amps. Do they both sound the same or does one mean that at a price point, this is the best you can get. How about the common claim that the piece of gear under review resulted in the best sound ever achieved in the reviewer's system . . . until next month when the phrase is repeated again. What about the claims that a $40-50,000 digital playback system will sound like really good vinyl. How much does the vinyl system cost that it is being compared to? How does one make any objective sense out of this? Why aren't cables bench tested in the reviews. Why aren't sound analyzed to compare the effect of tweaks and cables and cones and other gadgets. When a reviewer claims that small change in the system produces a large perceived musical change, can't there be any type of objective measurement just to show that there was a difference. I know that tweaks will change a sound, but allow the serious mags to demonstrate just what change occured. It is up to us to determine if we like the change or not.

The Audio Crtic magazine has quite a few - I remember reading this a couple months ago about the 10 biggest audio lies.

Analog cannot sound better than digital, ever.

All cables sound the same.

Tube gear simply cannot sound better than solid state.

I can't recall the others off the top of my head, but I think you get the idea. Give me a break.

Chris