Agreed with you about CR and frequency of repair and some other securely quantifiable measures. I also have few reservations about the measurements they have classically used on loudspeakers their empirical validity. I think their measurement expertise is way up there. My reservations have always been about the weight they give to their measurements in their rankings. Even way back when I would look at their ratings and rankings and think to myself - wow, I've listened to speaker X that is given a score of 93 and also speaker Y that has an 87 and Y sounds a heck of a lot better to me. And yes, later on, Hirsch-Houck Laboratories did begin got include subjective evaluations in their reports on equipment other than speakers. I pretty much agreed with them only a little more than I agreed with CR. These days, unfortunately, the opportunity to visit multiple audio stores to listen to a variety of gear is pretty much gone.
