Rank Stereophile, & why no Von Schweikert reviews

Check out the online magazine, "Stereo Times", for VSA speaker reviews. At last look they had reviewed five different pairs over the past few years. You can find these in Archives.

A lot of manufacturers don't want to be reviewed by Stereophile because they know their products will not show well in John Atkinson's measurements. So they go for magazines where there are no numbers to compete with a subjective reviewer's predictably ga-ga prose.

Not only no VS but never saw any reviews on Hyperion either. These 2 manufacturers' speakers have been reviewed by almost every review mag except Stereophile.

I still subscribe and read UHF. The entire principle of having a dedicated listening room as reference is an idea I like. The panel of three listers giving a review on the same product makes sense as well. They provide measurements as well.

My ONLY knock on them is because they're so small, and only 3 reviewers, they don't move through alot of manufactures. They tend to review one company's peice, and the same brand shows up for months. I remember one year it seemed like all they ever reviewed was Copland. Lately they've reviewed a ton of stuff from China. Not my cup of tea, but they still teach principles to users.

The latest issue has a great article on Digital Interconnects and why they can sound different. Very few magazines actually teach anymore, they have to devote most of their pages and time to advertising (Factory tours, panel discussions from CEO's or marketing heads) UHF is still small enough they don't have to do this. Heck they still print in black and white!

I'd like to tag on to Gmood1's ideas about measurements and add that IMO all reviewers should post their hearing curves as measured by an audiologist. A reviewer's ability/inability to hear certain frequencies of sound (we all have them) are as unique as our fingerprint. Having this information then the reader could contrast the speaker measurements with the reviewers hearing curve and see why one reviewer would like a given speaker while the other may find it too "bright, flat, rounded off etc."