Quick poll: Most enjoyable audio magazine ?

I just let my Stereophile subscription lapse. Fewer reviews of gear and music, and more ads. They're also reviewing less and less 'affordable' gear lately. Well at least affordable to me. They'll review one or two affordable pieces every other month, and they'll happen to be pieces I have no interest in.

What Hifi? was my favorite due to the reasons the OP mentioned. I just can't find it anymore. I liked their shoot-outs where they had a few different pieces for around the same price and had a group of 5 or so people reviewing them blindly. Often times one of them was a manufacturer. They combined this subjectivity with objective measurements and told how each piece varied from the average. No gushing endless gushing about products. They also had reviews where they outright said to avoid products, and sometimes those manufacturers advertised in their mag.

The only version of the mag I can find is What Hifi Sound & Vision, which has more home theater than anything else. Zero interest in that. What Hifi reviewed gear in most price ranges. I didn't agree with every review, but I agreed more than disagreed.

If I could subscribe to it I definitely would.

"I'm with the stereophile crowd. I dont occasionally worry about whether the manufacturers influence their reviews."

Idnfl: I don't mean to be disrespectful but I cringed when I read your response.

i worked in advertising for years. all for profit and non for profit companies are influenced by money . even anarchy.com needs financial support. ha. i,m not saying they buy good reviews but come on these people are human. the old stereo review stories were the worst in my opinion. remember when they,d run tests on a pioneer sx 1250 reciever and praise its low distortion. under the boat with an anchor rope on it and i couldn,t hear a difference. ha

As far as flipping through the ads, I like to look at the European stuff that isn't available over here in the states. I don't subscribe to either TAS or Stereophile anymore. As far as the writers go, I enjoyed reading Art Dudley the most, and I would love to get hold of back issues of his Listener magazine, which I never read. I also enjoy looking through older issues of TAS.

Print: Stereophile

E-Zine: Affordable Audio