The review wehave been promising is up

I don't necessarily disagree with sns and, as noted above, the magazine uses several platforms to let readers know what our favorite products are at all price points, both collectively (Editor's Choice) and individually (Golden Ears.) And references to specific competing components do make it into plenty of our reviews. But, to state the obvious, the ultimate "reference" for us is "the absolute sound"—live musical performance—and reviews that employ the descriptive language developed by TAS decades ago and that present details of a writer's subjective experience can also help quite a bit in making a purchasing decision. Please continue to sample our reviews—there are plenty of recent ones posted online.

Andrew Quint

Senior Writer

The Absolute Sound

+1 sns.

Andrew

  You and I had a little back and forth in the Letters section of Fanfare a few years back, and I respect your views.  However I haven’t read TAS for a few years either. I was really turned off by the shilling for MQA.  And I reject the fundamental premise of a system trying to realize “The Absolute Sound. “. Unless my listening room expands to the size of Chicago’s Symphony Center, my system will at best try to trick me with an illusion.  And as for non Classical, who knows what is absolute? What comes out of the mix is whatever decisions the engineer makes.

  You ridicule the “Consumer Reports” type of review.  Surely we all would like to try each component in our own system and decide.  Yet is this practical?  Am I going to carry several different two hundred pound floorstanders up the stairs to my listening room and back out?  Or will the likes of dCS let me audition a $100K DAC Stack in my own home and send it back 3 days later?  Or does Air Force allow $150K turntables out of their factory for an audition?

  The typical review will state something like “Peter McGraff of Wilson spent 3 days toeing in my Alexa’s until they were perfect”.  Can a mere mortal such as I expect such service?  Or else a reviewer might state “The amp made no sound when I turned it on so I emailed the CEO and 3 hours later a truck came with a replacement and the CEO flew in from Germany to plug it in for me”.  I can’t even get Frigidaire to fix the ice maker in my refrigerator and it’s under warranty.

  I think a few decades reviewing can warp the perspective here.  Bricks and mortar stores have gone the way of the Studebaker.  In the Covid era most people don’t want to see your face anyway.  It is all very fine to be Altruistic and say “We ain’t Consumer Reports, do your own comparisons”.  However most of us plebeian non reviewer types have very limited ways to make comparisons.  This may explain some of the reason people become furious with dealers plugging their wares here, because actually evaluating these claims is so darn hard.  We need more from reviewers than what you traditionally think is your purview.  If we don’t get it, we turn elsewhere, and thus less TAS sales, less value for advertising, less money to pay for reviews

mahler for these reasons we offer a two week in home trial if an Aeon is not to your liking you just have to send it back for a full refund

to date the Aeon has matched the performance of 15k to 22k units from several companies

Mahler our brick and moarter store is open for demos and we are thrilled to demo to new clients.

we are all vaxed and wear masks so no fear of covid

if we offer a two week money back guarantee  that should be enough proof for anybody to wants to try one. how good it sounds.

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect nj

432EVo importer

I don’t necessarily disagree with sns and, as noted above, the magazine uses several platforms to let readers know what our favorite products are at all price points, both collectively (Editor’s Choice) and individually (Golden Ears.

See? This is the kind of BS logic TAS uses to justify not simply making appropriate comparisons in a review. We’re supposed to weed through Editor’s Choice and Golden Ears lists and then somehow gleen how the review product would compare despite the respective reviews being done in completely different rooms and in completely different systems? Gimme a break!!!

And references to specific competing components do make it into plenty of our reviews.

Uh, really? Do you even read your own magazine? I’d put it at no more than 10%(and that’s being generous) of TAS reviews that provide any kind of useful product comparisons.

But, to state the obvious, the ultimate "reference" for us is "the absolute sound"—live musical performance—and reviews that employ the descriptive language developed by TAS decades ago and that present details of a writer’s subjective experience can also help quite a bit in making a purchasing decision.

But what about recordings made in a studio and made to sound like studio recordings? Are they supposed to sound like live performances too? Are systems supposed to alter studio recordings to sound live the way YOU think the live performance should sound? Bogus! The fact is THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE SOUND except what the recording engineer laid down and how well a system recreates it in a listening room.

And that you’ve constructed some ancient mythical language that somehow is supposed to help a reader weed through a reviewer’s words to somehow magically understand how a product sounds based solely on the reviewer’s individual “subjective” impressions is absurd and precisely why direct product comparisons are so helpful. Many is the time when writing a review I thought I had a product’s sound nailed only to have at least some of my impressions shown to be partially or completely wrong upon substituting a competitive product. Had I written reviews based solely on my own “subjective” impressions almost all my reviews would’ve been incorrect or at least somewhat misleading to readers. That’s precisely why publications like Soundstage! REQUIRE a comparisons section in every review, and each reviewer needs to have a comparable component in their system or they don’t review the product. Product comparisons improve accuracy and usefulness of reviews to readers and holds reviewers (and the magazine) accountable for their observations, but we certainly can’t have any of that TAS world now can we? Plus, it’d involve so much more work and effort on the part of the reviewer meaning you couldn’t crank out as many reviews - oh the horror!

But @aquint by all means feel free to keep twisting yourself in knots trying to defend and justify TAS’ outdated and relatively ineffective review policies. As someone mentioned above, in a world where quality audio dealers are few and far between people rely on product reviews now more than ever and thus need ACCURATE AND ROBUST reviews to help them make purchase decisions, and flowery rhetoric waxing poetic about what a reviewer “thinks” they hear without any stated checks and balances is basically useless and self-important drivel.