Manitunc, I saw that paragraph by Robert Harley, and I thought he hit the nail on the head. His statement pretty much sums it up, and I agree with him. Too bad that some of his own staff don't get it as well as he does.
As someone else also has experienced, TAS seems to continue to send copies to me, even though my subscription expired a few months ago. This is a sad commentary on the state of the business. Because of Harley's little editorial, I thought it would be only fair of me to pay for another year of the magazine. I did not deliberately let my subscription lapse; I only failed to renew it when they kept asking me to renew well in advance of the expiry date. That did and does bug me, until finally my subscription did in fact expire.
And then I read some of the reviews in this current issue. I found more factual errors and hyperbole than you can shake a xerostat at. Just for one example, JV states twice that a certain phono stage can or cannot "drive" a certain cartridge. I cannot believe he does not know that the cartridge drives the phono stage, so why confuse the novice readers? In another review, of Technical Brain amplifiers, he states that the "current" in the US electrical system was responsible for bringing down some earlier model of TB amplifier that was notorious for unreliability. Assuming that said amplifier was set up for 60Hz AC and not 50Hz, I have no idea what he could be talking about. The amplifier is responsible for drawing an amount of current at a certain voltage; the current drawn from the wall is determined by its topology, not the power company. Voltage spikes, maybe, but not current, could bring down a badly designed amplifier. If the amplifier is being killed by the current it draws, that can only mean that some critical part in the amplifier is under-specified for its current tolerance. There were much worse misconceptions promulgated elsewhere.
As someone else also has experienced, TAS seems to continue to send copies to me, even though my subscription expired a few months ago. This is a sad commentary on the state of the business. Because of Harley's little editorial, I thought it would be only fair of me to pay for another year of the magazine. I did not deliberately let my subscription lapse; I only failed to renew it when they kept asking me to renew well in advance of the expiry date. That did and does bug me, until finally my subscription did in fact expire.
And then I read some of the reviews in this current issue. I found more factual errors and hyperbole than you can shake a xerostat at. Just for one example, JV states twice that a certain phono stage can or cannot "drive" a certain cartridge. I cannot believe he does not know that the cartridge drives the phono stage, so why confuse the novice readers? In another review, of Technical Brain amplifiers, he states that the "current" in the US electrical system was responsible for bringing down some earlier model of TB amplifier that was notorious for unreliability. Assuming that said amplifier was set up for 60Hz AC and not 50Hz, I have no idea what he could be talking about. The amplifier is responsible for drawing an amount of current at a certain voltage; the current drawn from the wall is determined by its topology, not the power company. Voltage spikes, maybe, but not current, could bring down a badly designed amplifier. If the amplifier is being killed by the current it draws, that can only mean that some critical part in the amplifier is under-specified for its current tolerance. There were much worse misconceptions promulgated elsewhere.
