Phono Stage - The great analog tragedy

"Understanding music is a child’s play." Please explain what you mean, if you don’t. mind.

And,maybe it’s a fantasy to you, but I don’t see any reason you can’t go to a symphony hall, and listen to music. There must be at least 200 in the United States and nobody is forcing you to go hear amplified music unless you pick the wrong venue, which would mean it’s not a symphony hall. Are there no symphony halls where you live?
As for Harry‘s ‘snobbery,’ you are very far off base. Since Harry’s not aroundm I, one of his friends, will step in for him, given I know the "mission statement" of the magazine.

Harry was quite specific about the records he played for evaluation, why he used them, what could be heard and what was audible, but not totally clear and then the subtleties (aka: the "magiks" of the component). Why would you think that this was snobbery?  That is a writer’s job, not simply to talk about the bass, the midrange, the treble, but also if it reproduced dotted 1/8 notes cleanly or a Baroque "run" without smudging the instruments. Or, can the component separate out the cellos from the double bass if they are playing in the same key.

If I described the Kirov Orchestra and how they sounded in the hall in Carnegie, and how the left side sounded different from the right side and I’m doing that as an evaluation, where’s the snobbery? Do you think that acousticians also didn’t listen to an orchestra in that space while designing???

The point of The Absolute Sound was exactly what the title was: the sound of acoustic instruments in an unamplified acoustic space. And that was put out in issue one, so there was no change in  what the magazine’s mission was, and what the reviewing requirements were. And as far as your statement about all kids knowing when music is good, I don’t see that at all. The places I do see it are cello and piano recitals. But I don’t see that in the general public. I just read about people liking what they like and not paying much attention to the recording quality. 
Live music does sound different than recorded music, but recorded music picks up a hell of a lot of what happened on that stage when they were recording. And that is what we are trying to retrieve. But I will also say that a Yamaha flute being played in the symphony Orchestra sounds like a Yamaha flute, no matter what Hall it’s in, so don’t insist that everything sounds different simply because the hall is different or you’re sitting in a different section. For those of us who go to symphony concerts every month, we know what the hall sounds like, we know where the best acoustics are. (I have often changed my seat at intermission, just to sit somewhere else and hear what the music sounds like at a different point in the Hall). And even then, I’m gonna ask you exactly which halls you’re talking about because I’ve been in a few. I'd like to know which ones you've been to; maybe I'd want to go hear a symphony thgere! And I can always tell when they have a Bosendorfer piano in there, or a Steinway or whatever brand. It’s not hard to differentiate instruments when you play them yourself. The problem is, from what I’ve observed, most people are extremely unknowledgeable about the school of music (and musicians) except for the overproduced stuff that they listen to routinely. What they listen to is usually not acoustic, so they won’t hear as much of what the designed designed into the equipment, since most designers use acoustic music to fine tune their designs.

I’m going to add to the chorus: there were MANY great phonostages in the 1990s. That was when designed separated the linestage from the phonostage. There was Tom Evan’s Groove phonostage, Audio Research has had phonostages since the early 90s, Mares, Musical Surroundings Phenomena. And I owned a Vendetta SCP 2A back in 1992.

I’m thinking you’re very young, or you came into the audiophile community in the 2000s. That must be why you think phonostages only came of age in the 2000s, but clearly, as you can see, that was never the case.

@jasonbourne71 The "reference standard" in High End is the same as it has always been: its resemblance to live music as heard in the concert hall. UNAMPLIFIED. It’s not as though that hasn’t always been the standard for, say, TAS. Can’t speak to Stereophile or the other mags, as they rarely referred to the live experience. 

So, for those of us who play instruments, whichever component renders instruments and vocalists the way they sound in real life is "the best." And that includes dynamics.  Knowing how an instrument sounds (specific brands, too) makes it easier. Unfortunately, many people have never had a music class in their lives, or had to take it in school, so their choices will be based on something other than "live" experiences.

And phonostages are not that hard to identify if someone is familiar with music. The Vendetta, so often referred to in here, had a distinct sound and not for an instant sounded like the phonostage of the Convergent or the Modulus or the Jadis. Their differences were all audible, especially with the Convergent, which had very little sound of its own (except in the midbass).