We must never forget that the purpose of magazines is to sell copies....and the purpose of manufacturers is to sell product.
If manufacturers make NEW product.....the magazines can write NEW reviews of these NEW products and people will (hopefully) buy NEW product as well as the magazines?
There is no point in the magazines reviewing OLD products (which are no longer manufactured).....as there are no advertisers and a limited second hand market.
So we're caught on a treadmill with a self-perpetuating symbiotic relationship between magazine and manufacturer.
Because there is a constant requirement for NEW content in the magazines.....there is a reciprocating constant requirement for NEW product from the manufacturers and this gives the illusion of 'progress' in an industry....which in some areas (like analogue).....reached its zenith decades ago.
Do you really believe that the turntables produced today.....sometimes for seven figure sums.....are better than the top turntables produced by Micro Seiki, Denon, Technics, Victor/JVC, Garrard, Kenwood, or EMT in the '70s and '80s?
If you do.....you need to get out more.
And the same goes for tonearms and cartridges and many speaker systems as well.
But the only reviewer (to my knowledge) who has the chutzpah (and is allowed to survive)...is Art Dudley?
But there is no 'market' for manufacturers in Dudley's domain......apart perhaps from Shindo?
So for the rest of them.....there is this ever onward 'progression' in audio.
An unrelenting improvement which in reality is merely a mirage.
As others here have stated.......there is more reliable and genuine information here.....in these Forums and elsewhere on the Internet......than is generally available in the mainstream magazines.
But I would hate to see them disappear.........:-)
