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

Stereophile's rating system is helpful in shortening your list of equipment to audition. I have noticed (along with everyone else) some class rating "expansion". A few (okay, maybe it is several) of the Class A rated items would have been Class B a few years ago. When you are spending the big bucks, hopefully most people will have a tendency to listen to the equipment and decide for themselves.

Paulwp: That's a great observation you've made. While i never really paid attention to that in Stereophile, i have used a similar line of thought on various salespeople at Best Buy regarding Blose products. For instance, i'll ask them if they think that Blose products are built to sound "as accurate as possible" or if they have "a family sound that the designers think is musical". While they usually look at me as if i'm from Mars, they can finally understand what i mean after further explanation. Once we've reached that point, i then get them to listen to each of the different Blose products side by side, one after another. Their displays allow one to do this at the push of a button. In case you've never done this, each model sounds markedly different from one another.

Once they have been "shown the light" and see what i'm talking about first hand, they can then FULLY understand what i was getting at. One model is no more "accurate" than the other, nor do they have a familiar sound from one model to the next. They all sound like junk in different ways and are selling based on hype and reputation only. Once the salespeople realize these facts, they may have a harder time peddling this type of "low-fi" garbage. That is, if they have a conscience....

It's just part of the war on "audio junk" that i wage while working undercover as a plain-clothed civilian. At the same time, it is a small step towards helping to educate someone that is in a position to educate someone else. I'm hoping for the trickle-down effect : ) Sean
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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.

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 wouldn't trust Steropiles "Ratings".
First, they haven't reviewed everything.
I've heard set-ups including the high-priced so-called Class"A" components, and they sound crappy. Very prestigious, but Crappy!
There are obviously Excellent products out there that deserve more attention, but Stereophile doesn't get them. Why?
I've heard from people in the business that it can cost a lot of money to get a Class "A" rating. There are excellent products that we read about here on Audiogon that have had good reviews elsewhere but NOT in Stereophile. The price was too high for the maufacturer to get a review there, so Sterophile doesn't get that component for review. That's why they are losing credibility in the industry.