what's your opinion on the magazine 'stereo review'??

I share @roberjerman's high opinion of the four publications he named, as well as Art Dudley's Listener magazine. Of the newsstand mags, Audio was my fave: a good blend of "objective" and "subjective".

You got something against porn? You probably just read the articles. 😬 I knew the guy who ran Audio a little bit. He was a nice guy. 

HiFi News and Record Review -- Yeah!  I ran across it one evening while cruising a newsstand near where I lived.  Superb, subjective reviews of both classical LPs and hardware.  Loved Ken Kessler.  Not much later, I became buddies with Kevin Conklin, a regular customer at the classical records department where I worked at the time.  Kevin turned me on to The Absolute Sound.  Later, of course, he started writing for Harry Pearson's rag.

I also read Stereo Review in the 70s. I got married & started farming in 1978. The first load of corn I sold that fall went to purchase a new Sansui AU & TU 717.   Stereo Review had highly recommenced them.

I enjoyed "Stereo Review" back in the 70s, and it certainly piqued my interest in newer/better equipment as well as gave reviewers' perspective on artists or albums of interest. I always took reviewers' opinions as just that, and make my own buying and listening decisions.

As for the "Specs are everything" principle, I never bought that. Published specs are sensitive to test & measurement method and represent what is thought to be most important, not everything that actually is. Marantz used to point this out in their literature, saying in effect "Our specs may not be the most impressive, but we sound better." That of course is a matter of opinion and taste, but my experience bore it out in comparison with friends' gear.

Design decisions on the inside, such as the resonant frequency of a tank circuit, filter characteristics, or the precision of resistors may or may not be reflected in output specifications, but they all play a part in making the sound.