Do you approve of "How Stereophile Market itself"?

I just received my March issue of Sterophile. I really enjoyed the 2 page BMW ad. I will not renew to this mag unless Mr. Holt returns. With all due (dog) respect to Mr Atkinson, I think the mag would be better served if he would quit listening to how a component measures. When Mr. Atkinson retires, I might think about renewing to Stereophile. No disrespect meant to those who feel that how a speaker, amp, or whatever measures is of importance. IMO, this is meanless. Hook it up and see if you like it. I can't think of a better way to do it.
Dear Cluless, you are anything but cluless. Well said.

In spite of the many faults that Stereophile has it still represents the strongest voice of "high end audio." In that exalted position they can still represent our viewpoint and command respect from the Sony's and Phillips of the world who care little or nothing about good audio reproduction. A case in point is the new watermarking fiasco that threatens to ruin all future recordings. A loss of Stereophile could well mark the death knell of our hobby as we know it. Our replacement would of course be the black hole called audio/video. That shift of power would distroy any incentive manufacturers might have to produce products for our needs . Stereophile may be a highly flawed publication but it is our last and best hope for survival.

Stereophile has staying power and their classifications do help drive sales for manufacturers. I've seen many ads here where the seller points out the item for sale is "Stereophile Class A". Means nothing at all to me, from what I can tell it's hard not to get some sort of positive rating from Stereophile. There's WAY too many variables to take their opinion with more than a grain of salt. I have a hard time with any of the mags simply because of the nature of the beast; they get a new amp in for audition and have a month or so to write a review. In my experience it takes at least a month (or longer) for a component to burn in and the real character to show through. Synergy is overlooked. A speaker may be fantastic with solid state gear but be considered too warm with tubes. The room plays a big role, far as I know my room is quite different from any reviewers I'v heard about. More often than not they review the products with music I don't listen to. A system that shines with vocals and small-ensemble jazz may not be worth a damn when it come to rock. It goes on and on. Save the money spent on magazines and pick up some new music.

Getting back to the issue at hand, the unfortunate contact that "Clueless" received from NCAC in all likelihood has nothing to do with STEREOPHILE. There are companies that purchase subscription lists (including lists of cancelled subscribers) from third parties or fulfillment houses, and then attempt to represent themselves as being agents of the publisher in an attempt to obtain your renewal. These companies charge more than the publisher, and on occasion take your money and run. (I speak from experience on that one). I subscribe to a lot of magazines (news, sports, special interest, etc.) and I get about 5 or 6 of these phone calls a year; plus another 8 or 9 mailings a year. For example, within the just the past month or so, I have been contacted by alleged "representatives" of NEWSWEEK and THE SPORTING NEWS, who offered me an opportunity to extend my subscription at rates that were 30% to 50% higher than what the publisher charges. For your own protection, the lesson to be learned is to renew a magazine subscription directly and only through the publisher; and pay no attention to any other solicitations you may receive.

Please don't lump Phillips in with Sony; they aren't at all the same. Sony has been a major player in trying to drive down recording quality standards via lossy compression algorithms (in addition to having abysmal quality control in their own electronic products), whereas Phillips has been one of the few big-league defenders of audio quality. I will grant that recently Sony has seen fit to promote SACD, which is excellent but the jury is still out on the fate of this format. It could well be another Beta.

Re Stereophile, I can't stand their marketing people but I still will support them as one of the few audio publications devoted to the high end and to improvement in audio standards. And I disagree strongly with the above statement that measurements don't matter-- Some measurements don't, others definitely do. The challenge is trying to find measurements which correlate with what you hear and are thus useful. Please don't condemn measurement as useless simply because mankind hasn't been able to measure everything yet. That is every bit as ignorant as stating that medicine is useless because we don't yet know how to cure cancer 100% of the time. And Stereophile has been the only mag that is not only willing to perform measurements, but more importantly, is trying on a continuing basis to figure out which measurements are actually useful. This has been the most helpful in the loudspeaker arena, where the biggest problems still exist. Measurements of the step response and spectral decay of a speaker are tremendously useful, because they directly address an issue of tremendous importance, that is, time-domain behavior. And yes, they very convincingly correlate with what you can hear. In addition, even the impedance and phase plots of a loudspeaker are useful indirectly as an indicator of how well the crossover has been refined, cabinet and port resonances, etc. And I am sure that twenty years from now, those efforts will pay off in even better measurements. Just because we're not there yet is no reason to stop trying.