When a Reviewer "likes" something

Yeah, I found the article....I will quote a few lines

Yes, on the Web everyone has a voice ... 90% of what is said is crap ... a magazine acts as both aglomerator and gatekeeper....

Well, in the first moment it sounds harsh, but he isn't so wrong. Audiogon is probably the exception but there are others out there where you have to be careful not to get eye cancer.But this can also happen with print media, ever read Tone Audio? Here the world is good, no, it is much better than good, everything, I mean really everything promoted there is a ultra-huge recommendation.

Free information tends to be worth exactly what you've paid for...it is not the same information you get from a magazine like Stereophile

Hm, indeed the "I like it" comment you will find everywhere but in a review it is simply the wrong one. What you won't find in forum discussions is indeed the professional Product Placement, here we have facts, comments, enthusiastic and critical comments, sometimes supportive comments from hidden dealers and we have ... religion.
And Tequila :-)

Sam Tellig and Larry Greenhill made their Stereophile debuts in 1984, Michel Fremer, John Marks, Robert Baird (the one with the Beetles reissue recommendation, the essential one), and Art dudley also made their debuts around that time though not in this magazine. Wes Phillips, Bobs Reina and Deutsch, Brian Damkroger, Jon Iverson and Kalman Rubinson first appeard in Stereophile in the 1990's

Aha. Plenty of time to hear differences and to think about why something is different. 20 wasted years? 20 years cheating subscribers with recommendations which are based on "I like it" or to quote Mrs. Fremer while listening to the Caliburn: "That's better than Sex" (see in Class A recommendation, turntables)

Stereophile has an online Archive of records to die for, and reviews and measurements ...

ok, the records to die for is the answer to HP Super disc list but honestly, HP list is something totally different, those records are really top, and Stereophile didn't discover all the years the wrong typo in their Headline, correct is Records to die from...
6Moons has everything online, so what? Measurements are ok, but sometimes the tests are shortened because a unit does not survive it, but that is not written later in the recommendation list (see the Momentum amp "review" from D'Agostino..but Agostino has a huge ad in that mag...) Never saw measurements from Turntables about correct speed, about quality or parts,wow and flutter, correct geometry about tonearms (a lot of the longer ones are wrong), the discussion about Arm materials, distortion datas in the inner grooves or what's the reason for gold coils in cartridges....or the difference from Phono cables to regular RCA cables...

Summary: Where is the advantage?

Raul,
I have stopped. Head feels better already

Dear Raul,
You wrote, "well that's something that I too learned but that IMHO is not really true. Lewm, the most important watt(s) is/are those that are asked by the speakers and the amplifier can supply with accuracy in real time. Music is not " stady " but with huge dynamic demands over what you and me can imagine."

First, thanks for admitting that your Honest Opinion is only your honest opinion. As if. Second, those "huge dynamic demands" have to be contained in the envelope of the voltage output of the source component. If the source can only put out 2V, like most CD players and phono stages, then the input stage of the amplifier needs to be able to deal with 2V amplitude (at full volume) and never more than that. ALL the music is inside those 2V. What you are talking about is a situation where an amplifier has inadequate power to drive the speaker to the correct musical peaks. That is a problem of power, nothing to do with tubes vs transistors, and I have already said that if you want to use a low-impedance, inefficient, multi-driver speaker you should probably be looking to a solid-state solution. This has nothing to do with one technology being better than another. If the amp is capable, then those distortions on peaks also come about because of poorly designed speakers and drivers that fall apart sonically under stress. If you spend your life listening over and over again to the bombastic Telarc 1812, these issues will indeed plague you; I don't have that problem.

So let's be clear, I disagree. I believe that the best sounding amplifier, tube or SS will be one that has it's lowest distortion at it's lowest power output, such that distortion (we are talking THD) only increases as power demands increase. Of course, this should happen in a linear fashion and with as flat a slope of THD vs power output as possible.

There are several different iterations of First Watt amplifiers. Each has been designed based on a different approach. To say you dislike First Watt is meaningless; which one?

Further, you have not addressed my point about distortion in SS amplifiers when delivering power into a real world speaker with reactive rather than simple resistive characteristics. But lets also be clear that in my private audio decisions, I do not at all rule out SS amplifiers.

The original post asks about what it means when a reviewer likes something and I much earlier in the thread wrote a sad but true comment about it meaning little.

It was later pointed out that it is hard to find dealers who have the equipment to demo. This is true. Times have change and it is sad for the consumer that such a large percentage of demoing dealers have gone away.

Still, your own ears are the things that matter. Although audio shows are much maligned I find that I generally get a pretty good read about equipment at shows, especially speakers.

I know this mostly does not directly answer the original post but I think it addresses the reason why the OP asked the question.

Having listened to thousands of pieces of equipment in my career, two effective ways of selecting equipment seem to be:

1. Look for consistency on forums in the details of what posters say about the sound of a component. This means the exact descriptors, not just "xyz blows everything away" says little but exact descriptions that are repeated by many people are very telling.

2. Find an industry professional (dealer, manufacturer, distributor at a show or by luck of hearing his system) or very experienced consumer whose system you absolutely love and get advice from that person.

Dear Manitunc: Good stay in that way!

regards and enjoy the music,
R.