Any of you guys who have listened to more components than I have, or maybe anyone who has been in the industry: I see a lot of posts mentioning "stereophile class A " etc, so I assume this recommendation carries a lot of weight. (After purchasing my Audio PHysic Virgo II's, I saw that they were class A in stereophile, so I felt like I agreed with what they were saying.) Are the reviews completely independent? With the vast array of components out there, can they really cover all of them? Do you guys really agree with the class A and B thing? Thanks for the perspective....Mark
In so much as people's hearing differs--Their likes and dislikes--Their experience as listners differs--The rest of their equipment and the room--the amount of care in set-up,all differ. I doubt it would that difficult to substitute a class B product, within a given system, and get better sound than it had with the class A product it replaced.
You wrote: "I've heard from people in the business that it can cost a lot of money to get a Class "A" rating..... The price was too high for the maufacturer to get a review there, so Sterophile doesn't get that component for review."
Speaking as someone who has, in fact, recommended Class A for some components and not for others, this is an old canard for which no proof has ever been offered.
I wouldn't trust Steropiles "Ratings". First, they haven't reviewed everything. I've heard set-ups including the high-priced so-called Class"A" components, and they sound crappy. Very prestigious, but Crappy! There are obviously Excellent products out there that deserve more attention, but Stereophile doesn't get them. Why? I've heard from people in the business that it can cost a lot of money to get a Class "A" rating. There are excellent products that we read about here on Audiogon that have had good reviews elsewhere but NOT in Stereophile. The price was too high for the maufacturer to get a review there, so Sterophile doesn't get that component for review. That's why they are losing credibility in the industry.
Paulwp: The real problem with the disclaimer that prefaces the "A"-rated speakers is that if Stereophile sees fit to include such there, and they were really being honest about it, then they should go ahead and include the same thing everywhere in the rankings. Which they won't do because it would in effect nullify the whole idea of capsule review summaries and catch-all letter grades - and quite rightly so, if they were intent on pretending that these are somehow authoritative. Obviously, the truth is that nothing should be taken as gospel without reading the original review - and then that shouldn't be taken as gospel! Whether the piece in question is a $30K pair of speakers or a $300 set of cables. Upshot: The "A"-rated speakers disclaimer is archaic and wrongheaded, and if they are going to persist with R.C. at all, then the disclaimer should be removed and capsule review summaries included, same as with any other type of gear. Stereophile greatly overestimates their own importance if they can kid themselves into seriously thinking that anyone would actually drop big bux on some speakers - or anything else - because of a blurb in R.C., so let's please drop the pretentious act of seeming so worried for us poor audiophiles' easy impressionability.
But your objection is, to me, essentially meaningless until the day arrives that someone can prove they've produced a perfect component. Barring that, saying that reviewers (and by extension, manufacturers) don't 'know' what gear is 'supposed' to do, because their only possible job is to identify (or produce) sonically flawless gear, is empty sophistry. Of course there is no such gear, and there never will be, but there will always be imperfection and questions of perception and preference, which is why there will always be an audience for subjective reviewing (even if you may not be among it). Criticizing and knowing the limitations of subjective reviewing is one thing, and we should all be cognizant about it, but promoting uselessly unrealistic expectations by way of condemning the whole enterprise is another, and one with which I cannot agree, even if a lot of 'professinal' reviewing is done in a disappointing way.
Mmowry: How could the R.C. list help anyone in "...shortening your list of equipment to audition"?
>Fact: Stereophile 'recommends' virtually every piece of gear they review.
>Fact: Stereophile can only review a fraction of the gear made.
>Fact: Among what they do review, they can only do extremely little head-to-head comparing.
>Fact: Even if a piece you're interested in does get reviewed - be it positively or negatively (and as we all know, it's almost never the latter) - the review cannot possibly tell you anything about what *you* will think of its sound in *your* system.
The only way I can see that a magazine review could rule out auditioning a piece of gear is simply by providing some of the same sort of general information about a component's operation and configuration that is usually available on the manufacturer's website, or maybe if you dislike the results of certain lab measurements (though this can be debatable without gathering correlative sonic evidence, i.e. auditioning). But as far as sound goes, at best a review can only be looked at as being one piece of information that you can add to whatever else you're able to glean about a component's reputation before auditioning it. Maybe reviews can be helpful in identifying pieces of gear you'd be interested in auditioning, but I don't honestly think that mag reviews should be used to rule out auditioning anything (and the R.C. list and letter-grade ranking tell you even less than the review proper). For every time I've agreed with a reviewer's assessment, I've had differing opinions on enough gear over the years to know better. This is intrinsic to the pusuit of personal truth and taste, and is not an indictment of reviewing per se, but just a fact of life and a perfectly understandable one. IMO, we should take the mags for what they're worth and don't let anything they proclaim define our horizons without any corraborating evidence, preferrably from our own ears.
Paulwp: That's a great observation you've made. While i never really paid attention to that in Stereophile, i have used a similar line of thought on various salespeople at Best Buy regarding Blose products. For instance, i'll ask them if they think that Blose products are built to sound "as accurate as possible" or if they have "a family sound that the designers think is musical". While they usually look at me as if i'm from Mars, they can finally understand what i mean after further explanation. Once we've reached that point, i then get them to listen to each of the different Blose products side by side, one after another. Their displays allow one to do this at the push of a button. In case you've never done this, each model sounds markedly different from one another.
Once they have been "shown the light" and see what i'm talking about first hand, they can then FULLY understand what i was getting at. One model is no more "accurate" than the other, nor do they have a familiar sound from one model to the next. They all sound like junk in different ways and are selling based on hype and reputation only. Once the salespeople realize these facts, they may have a harder time peddling this type of "low-fi" garbage. That is, if they have a conscience....
It's just part of the war on "audio junk" that i wage while working undercover as a plain-clothed civilian. At the same time, it is a small step towards helping to educate someone that is in a position to educate someone else. I'm hoping for the trickle-down effect : ) Sean >
Stereophile's rating system is helpful in shortening your list of equipment to audition. I have noticed (along with everyone else) some class rating "expansion". A few (okay, maybe it is several) of the Class A rated items would have been Class B a few years ago. When you are spending the big bucks, hopefully most people will have a tendency to listen to the equipment and decide for themselves.
Here's my problem with the ratings: "Editor's Note: Class A Loudspeakers are sufficiently idiosyncratic and differ enough from one another that prospective customers should read Stereophile's original reviews in their entirety for descriptions of the sounds."
What does this tell you? The reviewers don't know what speakers are supposed to do. As one reviewer who does know what he's talking about said: "There is something on the recording. Reproducing it correctly can produce only one result. This "different perspective" is a way for audiophile reviewers to conceal the obvious fact(just compare Stereophile's measurements to the reviewers comments) that audiophile reviewers mostly have no clue as to what things ought to sound like."
To my mind, first class speakers shouldnt make sounds of their own. I'm fairly easy with respect to speakers, I think. There are a few that I think sound ok at their price points, some I think sound very good. But there have been some Class A rated speakers that are unlistenable.
Ultimately, the rating system is worthless, except in generating demand for the products.
What is wrong with "stuff that is made in "Paraguay" by a new company founded by an eccentric Tibetian monk You never heard..." "Tibetian" monk haven't heard of you either!
the recomendations of the traditional mags have less to do with music than ever before...they're kind of like playboy...great pictures...mediocre commentary.
Hey Jeff - Thanks for the kind words. I actually make myself wince when I read that stuff I tend to write late at night. It's impenetrable and pretentious by the light of day. I guess I do it because doing it entertains me, but I don't like reading it myself, and so shouldn't write that way out of consideration for others.
Anyway, to answer your questions, no and no. I'm not even a college grad, and didn't study language or writing beyond the 101 level when I was there. If I had, I probably wouldn't write as densely as I do, finding some more elegant and economical way of getting my points across. I'm considering keeping a copy of Strunk & White next to my computer and slapping myself with it every time I compose a run-on sentence or haul out a $2 word when a ten-center would've done the job just as well. I appreciate your reminding me of this by making me blush in public; good writing isn't supposed to call attention to the writer at the expense of clear communication. Still, I'm glad to know that not everyone shares my opinion of my bleary-eyed blather's insufferability. Happy listening, Zaikesman.
First thing to remember about the S-pile RCL is that virtually everything they review makes the list. In other words, it is a list of what the magazine chooses to review for whatever reason--and remember that this decision is made BEFORE the product is reviewed.
Regardless of a component being on a "Recommended" list or given a "Class A" or "Class B" rating, does it work in your room? Does it match your system?
Most of the problems I see with friends and other audiophiles is that they are trying so hard to place highly regarded pieces of equipment into systems that do not benefit. Quite often I see people committed to speakers that are too big for their listening room or that they spend $1000's trying to find an amplifier that will drive them well.
One friend has a custom-made 11 wpc Class A tube amp that drives Tannoy dual-concentric 15" speakers from the 60's and his system sounds better than most $100,000 plus systems and he has ALL the power he needs.
The guideline should be: what works for you and your room, and you can only tell when you try it out and listen to it. The reviews help, but they should not be considered the final word.
It would be interesting to see a listing of all the components reviewed by S'phile that would qualify for the Recommend Components list (ie, reviewed in the last three years, etc.) that are not on the RC list. I would guess that it's not very many. Coupled with the grade inflation others have noted, the list seems basically useless except as an index to where you can find previous reviews.
My main objection to the Recommended List is that it does not really represent components believed by all the staff of the magazine (or even a majority) to be worthy of inclusion, but what a reviewer thinks should be tossed into a given category from what he reviewed. As a result, it is not a true comparative rating of these components. I believed that the staff got together at least and debated the merits of including or excluding any given component. The notion of dropping a component still in production because it has not been auditioned in a while is strange to me, even more so considering how the ratings are arrived at. The one thing to say in favour of Stereophile's ratings is that the price of the component is not the main yardstick by which components are rated like is the case in TAS. Then again, audiophiles will then proceed to make their own sub-categories, usually based on the price of the component. How many audiophiles would hold the position that, for example, Bryston 7B STs at $5,260 a pair are the equal of Boulder 2050s at $59,000 a pair or that Infinity Prelude MTS at $10,000 a pair are the equal of Dynaudio Evidence Temptations at $85,000 or that a pair of Paradigm Reference 100 v2s at $2,400 a pair are the equal of the Kharma Midi-Grand Ceramique 1.0 at $32,500 a pair. Each of these pairs of components are on the same step of the ladder. I could multiply the examples, but you get my drift. TAS, on the other hand, follows much more closely, the great audiophile myth that money correlates directly and almost always with sound quality; leaving aside the whole question of enjoyment. I'm simply too cheap to get much enjoyment out of buying a component costing 10 to 14 times the price of another component. Aside from snob appeal or the pride of ownership to put a more positive spin on this, the small differences in such components, hailed by the true believers as HUGE, simply are not worth it. How many concerts can you attend for the $75,000 difference between the Dynaudios and Infinitys? If money is no concern to you, you are truly blessed. Most other audiophiles have other preoccupations apart from canned music. The Stereophile list then becomes a wonderful instrument to sort out what your money can buy and what is deserving of a serious audition. Reviews of expensive equipment is great entertainment, but the bulk of what folks can buy, even if they are committed audiophiles, is to be found in more reasonably priced products. I always feel for the person (often enough the dealer who brought the product in his store to wow the customers) who is advertising a pair of $85 K speakers or $50 K mono blocks (now replaced in that manufacturers line by something that performs as well as the discontinued product for a MSRP half of the previous model) for an extended period at less than half the original asking price. When does reality enter the picture? The Stereophile list would be sorely missed if it disappeared. This can't stop all manner of criticism though. Bottom line, an audiophile is first and foremost a person who knows better, at least in his own mind, than other people. There are two types of fools: those who listen to the advice of everyone and those who listen to the advice of no one. Using the list, I normally tend to err on the side of the great principle of the conservation of one's capital. he fact that products at a decent price are to be found in Class A of hte list is all right with me.
Zoya, that kind of 'Class A' or 'B' (operational class of an amplifier, an electrical engineering term not having anything to do with subjectively 'letter-grading' a component's sound in a review) is obviously not what the thread-head's question pertains to. Since so many have gotten these terms confused around here in the past, it's probably best not to go into that quagmire yet again here when it's not been put in play, or at least not without making the distinction explicitly clear...
Gs5556, I think you might agree that poor old Stereophile irrevocably blundered long ago, in putting their little heirarchy in harm's way right from the outset by employing the A, B, C, D, E designations for the rankings - thereby immediately reminding absolutely everybody of their grade-school report-card ratings, where the lower rankings signified unacceptable-to-below-average performance. They've been vainly fighting this perception ever since, trying to remind us with each "Recommended Components" issue that ALL the rankings qualify as recommendations - just ones of varying degrees and qualifications. Natch, the manufacturers picked up on the audiophile public's casual inference about anything less than an "A" as a 'grade' for an expensive piece of audio gear, and combined with the magazine's hypocritical policy of runaway grade inflation and grading definitions which blatantly belie their application, the result has been as destructive to honesty and integrity as it was pathetically predictable...
All I can say is that I do not agree with the S-Phile in many ways.I think they show favoritism to some and then are not fair with others,Kind of like mood swings.I have seen them almost or did distroy the company that made my speakers with out due process after the designer asked to come out to see what was wrong .They went ahead and bashed the Co. after that. My cousin went by their review of Phillips CD player in the late 80's then tested Sony against it and found their opinion did not hold up with fact,He sold all his mags and never looked back. People should judge for themselves vased on their own experience and how things work in their system. In the end your the one who should judge not a mag.You'll get better results from this BB and AA's then any mag I believe.
BTW my speaker Co, was hailed by everyone else besides S-Phile,but they are the leading Audio Mag on the planet so Cos. get squashed if they get a bad review if they are not firmly established and can take the weight of a bad review.
..."Reviewers have good and bad days just like us."(Johnj)..
I would have to disagree with this statment! Reviewers, if you read their reviews, have products for review for WEEKS, EVEN MONTHS!!!...not a day! And they all have reference systems whith which to make competent comparisons, and know EXACLTY WHAT A PRODUCT IS LIKELY CAPABLE OF! I would never buy that a review just simply got it wrong with all their experience! But I can understand "selling soap" and or "incentives"!...as a business man myself. Perspective is always good while reading reviews in magazines, respected or not. So that in mind, it's always good to keep the perspective that "the mighty dollar" is where the people running the magazine's perspective is!...and probably most anyone else who's in business..duh! Since it's just a dumb catagory-thing in the end, who's to say what's what!?! YOu read it for entertainment, and don't take it like it's "God's spoken word!" I can indeed whole heartedly concure that there's been a ton of misplaced items in the ratings list that Stereophile puts up and, for that matter, the ratings that HT magazine posts! (Hint, notice that Def Tech's get rated as state of the art in every way all the time!...then see all the ad's for Def Tech in the same magazine!!!) ...Hey, I wonder if Sadam Hussein was a manufacture of audio gear, would his gear ever have gotten a Class B rating from his own country man's magazines...?! Hummmmm...maybe different incentives there, ey? Never the less, It's safe to say that we audiophiles have a right to make a fuss about anything we want in our great hobby. We can do what we want in our forums, with our gear, and all associated mediums. But then again, another perspective is that audiophiles in general tend to be the most critical and picky people alive! So if we want to gripe about our fav gear not getting recognition, then fine. And if we want to complain, because we trusted the mag we give our money to to "tell it like it is", and they let us down when the product get's home, because we are IN A HURRY to have the end-all or best audio gear possible for our money, then fine! It's a free country where I live anyway!...and we can excercise our oppinions(thank God) accordingly. Still, if anyone thinks that there are absolutes with people, other than that PEOPLE HAVE AGENDAS, and it's money that makes the world go around in the business world, then it's time to reconsider! Patience, time, trial and error, diligence, and a little knowledge and application can go a long way in achieving anything mostly! It's not so different if someone's trying to put together a truely fine audio system either...you're just not going to get it by simply reading a review or some ratings, or doing this stuff for a few day's out of your life! It's all good though...
Zaikesman, I am impressed with your command of language. It is almost "Ciceronian" in style. I love it! For my own personal edification, tell me if you have a background in English and/or Latin. What does this have to do with audio? NIHIL! But what the heck! I am curious. Today, such prose is rare.
Once upon a time, Stereophile reviewed the Wilson Witt speaker, gave it a "high" Class B rating. Wilson reacted like a little girl, personally set up the speakers at the editor's room, and lo and behold, they were reconsidered as Class A. That did it for me. Of course, a new $8,000 speaker that received a Class B rating was the kiss of death, considering the Audio Physic Virgo was Class A - can't tell those apart from Sound-Lab A-1's, can you? (sarcasm, not a knock on AP) - at half the price.
So, to me, if two editors disagree on a Class A, which is supposed to be a rating that is clear and unambiguous as far as sound goes, then it's not Class A - even by THEIR standard. How can anyone expect to take the reviewer seriously if the editor over rules him? No, I do not take those ratings seriously anymore. But I did when the magazine was the size of a paperback - even though it rated my Thiel 3.6's as Class B, which was an honest rating with respect to the kilobuck speakers available. Nowadays it seems anything held down by gravity qualifies for Class A.
Class "A" for electronic components - is not a rating - it means that equpment operates only in linear mode with the least distortion, Class "AB" and Class "C" are much more efficient and don't cause as much heat but generate crossover or switching noise added to the signal. Just my 5 cents.
About all that can truly be said for this "grading" system is that it is unlikely (not impossible) that a seriously flawed component would be given a "Class A" or "B" ranking. BUT: This is really saying extremely little, because the distinctions being made by audiophiles at this level are not about gross questions of competence, they are about relatively slight matters of personal preference and system synergy. With luck, a reader can basically hope to, over time, gain enough familiarity with any reviewer's preferences and language to estimate a degree of trust in respect to that reviewer's opinions having even a somewhat predictable correlation with their own perceptions and preferences, something made wildly difficult from square one just by virture of the fact that there exist limitless system variations within our crucially system-dependent world. But the letter grading system, inherently flawed from the start, has only become more and more meaningless as the years have gone by and the top-rated components have seemingly exponentially multiplied.
Are the reviews and reviewers completely independent? Technically, probably yes - the reviews and reviewers are not operating on a strictly predetermined basis like professional wrestling, or forcibly coerced into their conclusions. But that is not the same as being able to say the deck is not loaded, or that the reviews should be seen as always authoritative. It's called "subjective reviewing" for a reason, and that's the way (highly subjective) most audiophiles seem to prefer it. The opinions rendered in conventional high end reviewing, while their authors may feel they are honestly reflective of what they heard, typically leave so many uncontrolled and dependent variables, fail to to achieve any semblence of comprehensive comparision, are so vulnerable to unconscious bias, are so potentially compromised in integrity by manufacturer influence and benevolence, and are so formulaic in their means of operation and communication, that even with the purest of reviewer intentions - and accounting for the aforementioned overriding factors of listener personal preference and infinite system variability - most cannot be looked at as carrying much more than benign curiousity and entertainment value at best (with the more worthwhile ones maybe throwing in a bit of technical or historical educational value).
This is mostly all OK for the sophisticated reader - especially since in truth any notions of 'real objectivity' are actually unattainable even as theoretical ideals (and furthermore would be fundamentally irrelevent) anyway. But for the novice review reader, you will very likely be swayed by what the 'pros' write, so you can only hope that it will prove to be in the generally correct (for you) direction.
Use the Stereophile ratings as a guide....not as an absolute. Also be aware that they only rank items they have reviewed in the present incarnation. They also drop from the list after some time has passed since the review.
Reviewers have good and bad days just like us. Campanies that advertise (or do not) will get more or less attention, though Stereophile will deny that. Read the review, not just the class A or B rating.
Ask about equipment on this forum but again use it as a guide, not an absolute.
Good luck... and I agree the Virgo's are great speakers especially in their price range.
NO, i don't agree with most of what their ratings have to say and / or how equipment is ranked. Having said that, i'm waiting for Musical Fidelity to start making speakers. After all, why wouldn't they ? We already know that they would surely warrant a "Class A" rating, even if they broke within the first 24 hours of operation. Sean >
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