Stereophile "coverage"


Stereophile must enjoy all the negative reaction they get out of their choices of what to cover. Witness the latest cover story, the new Krell LAT-1 speaker. Here, from the biggest of the big advertisers, we get basically immediate cover-story coverage of their latest release, a $37,500 speaker. Stratospheric. The reviewer (who amazingly wasn't Jonathon Scull, with something of this price), is extremely positive while almost seeming to forget the price of this beast. It doesn't go much below 40Hz and it measures horribly. I guess you'll have to wait for their $75K model to get around those obstacles, though the option to pair the LAT-1's with some Krell Master subs is offered up to get down below 40Hz.

So, a super-expensive speaker coupled with other reviews of >$8K components ("you guys never review affordable stuff!"), immediate, feature coverage of a new Krell product ("You guys pander to your advertisers!"), and a very positive review of gear that nobody would argue measures respectably (at any price) ("You guys always give good reviews!"), on top of the usual reduced size of the magazine in the middle of the summer - the August issue should keep the negative feedback coming in full doses.

kthomas

Showing 2 responses by rcprince

They actually had a few interesting articles in there, but very little, and only a handful of equipment reviews. What disappoints me the most is that they used to have a lot of music reviews, and now there's hardly anything. Two classical recordings? Only a couple of rock and jazz? Reminds me of Audio magazine in its final years. Fortunately TAS has a good number of music reviews, and I get BBC Music magazine as well.
Mhubbard, years ago there was a big fight between Stereophile and Bob Carver, which I believe may have gone to court, and which I recall may have stemmed from his challenge that he could make a solid state amplifier that would sound the same as a 'Phile-chosen tube amplifier, which he did but not to Stereophile's satisfaction. I believe that it was part of the settlement they had with Carver that they would no longer make any references to him or his company, and I'm sure there's enough bad blood still between them that he won't give them his products for review or his advertising dollars.