Sterophile reviews now carry that same thread of reasoning that PBS has been allowed to adopt while remaining "commercial free"--- this is not an ad but here is our name, address, phone # and oh yeah exactly what we do while we 'support this station', I have always tried to read between the lines about equipment reviews, if you do it long enough with the same reviewer you can get a sense of what is what, but when Chip Stern lauded the VAC Avatar and the bench decreed it as obviously having something defective going on in a major way, I was surprised that Chip never followed up, and a drummer to boot, you just can't trust anybody including me who bought not only the VAC Avatar (SE), but a used 24/96 Alpha and CL-20 as transport, a la Chip in his review, and now with an all silver and gold cable path, I am glad I did.
Most Honest Audio Magazine?
I subscribe to Stereophile and I really enjoy reading it but something happened last year that made me raise an eyebrow as to the authenticity of their intentions. Remember the review of the B&W Nautilus 805's? The original reviewer raved about them and rated them "Class A Restricted Low Frequency". Shortly thereafter they demoted the same speaker down to "Class B Restricted Low Frequency". This really hurt the magazine's credibility in my eyes. My first conclusion was that they didn't want to upset the other manufacturers who produced "Class A" products at far higher prices. Shouldn't a trade journal give credit to the truly remarkable products especially when they are produced for relatively decent prices? It's unfortunate that the advertising dollars of the megabuck manufacturers bullied a stellar product into receiving a less than stellar final rating. I'm wondering if this hasn't happened before. I've since heard from some of my audio buddies that corruption does indeed exist in the audio press; everything from reviewers being related to manufacturers to reviewers being offered products for a song (pun intended). Please share your thoughts and experiences when it comes to audio magazines and let me know which ones you'd rate best and worst. Putting together a great system is hard enough without having to sift through the sometimes suspicious advice of those publications who purport to advance the hobby.