++++StereoPhile Class A components+++++


Any of you guys who have listened to more components than I have, or maybe anyone who has been in the industry: I see a lot of posts mentioning "stereophile class A " etc, so I assume this recommendation carries a lot of weight. (After purchasing my Audio PHysic Virgo II's, I saw that they were class A in stereophile, so I felt like I agreed with what they were saying.) Are the reviews completely independent? With the vast array of components out there, can they really cover all of them? Do you guys really agree with the class A and B thing? Thanks for the perspective....Mark
mythtrip

Showing 12 responses by zaikesman

About all that can truly be said for this "grading" system is that it is unlikely (not impossible) that a seriously flawed component would be given a "Class A" or "B" ranking. BUT: This is really saying extremely little, because the distinctions being made by audiophiles at this level are not about gross questions of competence, they are about relatively slight matters of personal preference and system synergy. With luck, a reader can basically hope to, over time, gain enough familiarity with any reviewer's preferences and language to estimate a degree of trust in respect to that reviewer's opinions having even a somewhat predictable correlation with their own perceptions and preferences, something made wildly difficult from square one just by virture of the fact that there exist limitless system variations within our crucially system-dependent world. But the letter grading system, inherently flawed from the start, has only become more and more meaningless as the years have gone by and the top-rated components have seemingly exponentially multiplied.

Are the reviews and reviewers completely independent? Technically, probably yes - the reviews and reviewers are not operating on a strictly predetermined basis like professional wrestling, or forcibly coerced into their conclusions. But that is not the same as being able to say the deck is not loaded, or that the reviews should be seen as always authoritative. It's called "subjective reviewing" for a reason, and that's the way (highly subjective) most audiophiles seem to prefer it. The opinions rendered in conventional high end reviewing, while their authors may feel they are honestly reflective of what they heard, typically leave so many uncontrolled and dependent variables, fail to to achieve any semblence of comprehensive comparision, are so vulnerable to unconscious bias, are so potentially compromised in integrity by manufacturer influence and benevolence, and are so formulaic in their means of operation and communication, that even with the purest of reviewer intentions - and accounting for the aforementioned overriding factors of listener personal preference and infinite system variability - most cannot be looked at as carrying much more than benign curiousity and entertainment value at best (with the more worthwhile ones maybe throwing in a bit of technical or historical educational value).

This is mostly all OK for the sophisticated reader - especially since in truth any notions of 'real objectivity' are actually unattainable even as theoretical ideals (and furthermore would be fundamentally irrelevent) anyway. But for the novice review reader, you will very likely be swayed by what the 'pros' write, so you can only hope that it will prove to be in the generally correct (for you) direction.
Zoya, that kind of 'Class A' or 'B' (operational class of an amplifier, an electrical engineering term not having anything to do with subjectively 'letter-grading' a component's sound in a review) is obviously not what the thread-head's question pertains to. Since so many have gotten these terms confused around here in the past, it's probably best not to go into that quagmire yet again here when it's not been put in play, or at least not without making the distinction explicitly clear...

Gs5556, I think you might agree that poor old Stereophile irrevocably blundered long ago, in putting their little heirarchy in harm's way right from the outset by employing the A, B, C, D, E designations for the rankings - thereby immediately reminding absolutely everybody of their grade-school report-card ratings, where the lower rankings signified unacceptable-to-below-average performance. They've been vainly fighting this perception ever since, trying to remind us with each "Recommended Components" issue that ALL the rankings qualify as recommendations - just ones of varying degrees and qualifications. Natch, the manufacturers picked up on the audiophile public's casual inference about anything less than an "A" as a 'grade' for an expensive piece of audio gear, and combined with the magazine's hypocritical policy of runaway grade inflation and grading definitions which blatantly belie their application, the result has been as destructive to honesty and integrity as it was pathetically predictable...
I'm curious - How many of the posters here who see advertisers receiving positive reviews as de facto incriminating evidence of a quid pro quo are Consumers Reports subscribers? How many would pay what a Stereophile subscription would cost if they didn't accept advertising? How many would even enjoy perusing the magazine if it were bereft of ads?

I agree that Stereophile's credibility gap is of their own making, but people unwilling to put their money where their mouth is shouldn't lob hand-grenades.
Hey Jeff - Thanks for the kind words. I actually make myself wince when I read that stuff I tend to write late at night. It's impenetrable and pretentious by the light of day. I guess I do it because doing it entertains me, but I don't like reading it myself, and so shouldn't write that way out of consideration for others.

Anyway, to answer your questions, no and no. I'm not even a college grad, and didn't study language or writing beyond the 101 level when I was there. If I had, I probably wouldn't write as densely as I do, finding some more elegant and economical way of getting my points across. I'm considering keeping a copy of Strunk & White next to my computer and slapping myself with it every time I compose a run-on sentence or haul out a $2 word when a ten-center would've done the job just as well. I appreciate your reminding me of this by making me blush in public; good writing isn't supposed to call attention to the writer at the expense of clear communication. Still, I'm glad to know that not everyone shares my opinion of my bleary-eyed blather's insufferability. Happy listening, Zaikesman.
Golden Ears, Kr4 presumably knows you have no proof of your claims because there is none that could be had, and I strongly suspect the same thing. So please tell us: Who exactly "in the industry" has purported to tell you what the going price is to 'buy' a Stereophile "Class A" ranking (something which, in your next sentence, you confuse with 'buying' any review at all)? And if there were such a quid pro quo, and it was so prohibitively exhorbitant as you imply, then how could you explain the proliferation of "Class A"-rated components over the past several years, even during lean times for segments of the industry? Or the occasional "B" or "C" rankings sometimes given to products made by financially healthy companies, who would have every incentive to simply pay up for the higher ranking if that were all it took? There are enough real pitfalls to criticize about the mag reviewing game without having to make up incredible and unsupported stories of massive corruption and blatant fraud. As I've written around here before, if that were all that was wrong with 'professional' reviewing the way it's commonly practiced, then fixing the situation would be a lot simpler than reality tells it to be.
Mmowry: How could the R.C. list help anyone in "...shortening your list of equipment to audition"?

>Fact: Stereophile 'recommends' virtually every piece of gear they review.

>Fact: Stereophile can only review a fraction of the gear made.

>Fact: Among what they do review, they can only do extremely little head-to-head comparing.

>Fact: Even if a piece you're interested in does get reviewed - be it positively or negatively (and as we all know, it's almost never the latter) - the review cannot possibly tell you anything about what *you* will think of its sound in *your* system.

The only way I can see that a magazine review could rule out auditioning a piece of gear is simply by providing some of the same sort of general information about a component's operation and configuration that is usually available on the manufacturer's website, or maybe if you dislike the results of certain lab measurements (though this can be debatable without gathering correlative sonic evidence, i.e. auditioning). But as far as sound goes, at best a review can only be looked at as being one piece of information that you can add to whatever else you're able to glean about a component's reputation before auditioning it. Maybe reviews can be helpful in identifying pieces of gear you'd be interested in auditioning, but I don't honestly think that mag reviews should be used to rule out auditioning anything (and the R.C. list and letter-grade ranking tell you even less than the review proper). For every time I've agreed with a reviewer's assessment, I've had differing opinions on enough gear over the years to know better. This is intrinsic to the pusuit of personal truth and taste, and is not an indictment of reviewing per se, but just a fact of life and a perfectly understandable one. IMO, we should take the mags for what they're worth and don't let anything they proclaim define our horizons without any corraborating evidence, preferrably from our own ears.
Golden_ears, it is not my intent to minimize or deny the insidiously cozy nature of the mag/manufacturer relationship, but to paraphrase the late Dave Thomas, the beef is still missing from the particular burger you're asking us to swallow. I do use my ears - and my eyes - which tell me you've got nothing but a lot of hot air to offer here. I suggest that you use your common sense - or is the next thing you'll be telling us that the UN and the 'Trilateral Commission' are brokering Stereophile's review deals? Armchair conspiracy-theorizing is a cheap commodity, but your brand of evidence-free insinuation just makes reasonable concerns about the review mill and its real effects on marketing in the high end industry that much easier for the main players to dismiss with a wink and a nudge.
Paulwp: The real problem with the disclaimer that prefaces the "A"-rated speakers is that if Stereophile sees fit to include such there, and they were really being honest about it, then they should go ahead and include the same thing everywhere in the rankings. Which they won't do because it would in effect nullify the whole idea of capsule review summaries and catch-all letter grades - and quite rightly so, if they were intent on pretending that these are somehow authoritative. Obviously, the truth is that nothing should be taken as gospel without reading the original review - and then that shouldn't be taken as gospel! Whether the piece in question is a $30K pair of speakers or a $300 set of cables. Upshot: The "A"-rated speakers disclaimer is archaic and wrongheaded, and if they are going to persist with R.C. at all, then the disclaimer should be removed and capsule review summaries included, same as with any other type of gear. Stereophile greatly overestimates their own importance if they can kid themselves into seriously thinking that anyone would actually drop big bux on some speakers - or anything else - because of a blurb in R.C., so let's please drop the pretentious act of seeming so worried for us poor audiophiles' easy impressionability.

But your objection is, to me, essentially meaningless until the day arrives that someone can prove they've produced a perfect component. Barring that, saying that reviewers (and by extension, manufacturers) don't 'know' what gear is 'supposed' to do, because their only possible job is to identify (or produce) sonically flawless gear, is empty sophistry. Of course there is no such gear, and there never will be, but there will always be imperfection and questions of perception and preference, which is why there will always be an audience for subjective reviewing (even if you may not be among it). Criticizing and knowing the limitations of subjective reviewing is one thing, and we should all be cognizant about it, but promoting uselessly unrealistic expectations by way of condemning the whole enterprise is another, and one with which I cannot agree, even if a lot of 'professinal' reviewing is done in a disappointing way.
I have to agree with Kal, Sean - Stereophile has bored me to tears many times, as they must do on such occasions, with their detailed accounts of equipment failure and what it took to repair/circumvent the situation. Obviously, there's no way for the reader to know for sure that all of the reported incidents equal all the actual incidents, but given the extent of what's been printed in the mag through the years, there's really no reason for anyone to doubt that they're reporting everything worth mentioning.

As far as the manufacturer personally coming to a reviewer's home to make a fix - or to provide the even more common rendering of set-up assistance - you can legitimately argue those questions both ways, but I can understand the magazine's affirmative policy on this activity as a practical matter, and again, the evidence would seem to indicate that they always disclose such assistance to the reader. But: Does this practice run the risk of unduly influencing the reviewer's opinions (for either better or worse)? I think it certainly can, or at the very least it raises questions of appearances. The most effective way around that issue would probably be the termination of the whole manufacturer gear loan policy - something which could carry many advantages in theory, but which in practice the mags have always claimed they can't afford to do. Whether or not one believes that this claim always rings true - what with the advent of Audiogon among other factors - is another topic.

However, I have a very hard time understanding Stereophile's and the others' condoning of the practice of manufacturers wining and dining reviewers, separate checks or no, you-pay-this-time I-pay-next-time included. It's already impossible to prevent reviewers from being long-time acquaintances of various industry players (and reviewers ought to recuse themselves from covering gear manufactured by such 'friends') - the least the mags could do is draw the line on reviewers junketing around the world to be entertained by company heads. They could send non-reviewing reporters to cover stories on companies and factories, and limit the reviewers to the more impersonal interactions they maintain are necessary to conduct fair and informative reviews.
Well, as long as your family and friends aren't in the hi-fi manufacturing biz, I don't think we need go quite that far... ;^)