Stereophile Class A tables

Forums can be funny insofar as they always:
a. have people saying something costing £100 sounds better than something costing £4000 - yet the reviewer never does a proper shootout against the said hypothetical component;
b. magazine opinions are always seen as very biased. To some extent I agree with this - but most people on forums review things that they have bought.
Of the Class A components, I have heard the Brinkmanns and the DPS. Oddly enough I made the mistake of not buying a DPS when they first came out as it had no magazine reviewer approval. Instead of going by the class rating, see which reviewers like what you like, and use them ass a guide to 'voicing' ass opposed to class rating. For instance Roy Gregory likes a kind of high resolution neutrality, whereas Art Dudley has a preference of PRAT

Getting back to the original topic - stereophile class a ratings aren't too bad, but place the grading relative to the reviewer and their preferences.
ie. a class A component for one reviewer who likes a warm sound, may well be a class C for another reviewer who likes a cooler system sound. Most reviwers place according to their prejudices, they may try and say otherwise, and of course some components float everyones' boat whereas others such as NAIM or KONDO polarise listeners