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Most Honest Audio Magazine?

I subscribe to Stereophile and I really enjoy reading it but something happened last year that made me raise an eyebrow as to the authenticity of their intentions. Remember the review of the B&W Nautilus 805's? The original reviewer raved about them and rated them "Class A Restricted Low Frequency". Shortly thereafter they demoted the same speaker down to "Class B Restricted Low Frequency". This really hurt the magazine's credibility in my eyes. My first conclusion was that they didn't want to upset the other manufacturers who produced "Class A" products at far higher prices. Shouldn't a trade journal give credit to the truly remarkable products especially when they are produced for relatively decent prices? It's unfortunate that the advertising dollars of the megabuck manufacturers bullied a stellar product into receiving a less than stellar final rating. I'm wondering if this hasn't happened before. I've since heard from some of my audio buddies that corruption does indeed exist in the audio press; everything from reviewers being related to manufacturers to reviewers being offered products for a song (pun intended). Please share your thoughts and experiences when it comes to audio magazines and let me know which ones you'd rate best and worst. Putting together a great system is hard enough without having to sift through the sometimes suspicious advice of those publications who purport to advance the hobby.
canadianguy

Showing 2 responses by mrmitch

mrmitch
359 posts
 
I tend to agree that honesty and entertainment dont go hand in hand. That being said, I've had subscriptions to both Absolute Sound and Stereophile since the mid '80's. I think that Stereophile has gone tremendously awry from the course set by J. Gordon Holt, while I still enjoy most of the writing in Absolute Sound. And for those who recall, I used to shake my head in disbelief when a certain S'phile writer would tout how he listened from his Ribbon Chair, or "the soundstage was incredible from my Ribbon Chair", which made me question whether I was reading Stereophile or The Robb Report.-Just sayin'--Mrmitch
mrmitch
359 posts
 
Just as an afterthought, I would hope all of us are wise enough to take whatever ANY audio magazine says with a fairly large grain of salt, for all of the aforesaid reasons. Where they are useful is in bringing new things to your attention. You should be using all the info you glean from all the magazines you can read by synthesizing the bits and bytes and then once youve formed your own opinion , go and listen if possible. I know some of us live in areas where there arent distributorships of certain manufacturers, and there I can see the magazines being more relied upon. I certainly dont think any of the magazines are out there to purposefully deceive us, but Caveat emptor applies to them as well as the equipment.--Mrmitch
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