Stereophile's 2021 products of the year

To the dude with limited reading comprehension, never said there are no good speakers with less than 92dB. What I did was answer a question, what if any measurements are important? Speaker sensitivity surely is one of them. Notice, since I actually do read and comprehend, I do not twist your words around into something you never said. I take what you actually did say and show how you completely misunderstand the message.

Anyone looking to build a great music system will do well to exclude from consideration speakers with low sensitivity. Such a speaker will limit your amplifier choices. Since the sound you get is not all due to the speaker but is the sum total of everything in the system, then things like choosing hard to drive speakers exact a price in terms of having to spend more money on amplifiers. Therefore, if you want the best sound you can get for the least money you will do well to avoid such problems. Is that so hard to understand?

I would love some tutorial on the most important measures for primary components and how they link - e.g. impedance/loading MC cartridge to phono pre - line stage...etc. And if stuff like that isn’t really important, I need to know that too.

Gotcha covered.

The most important measurements are speaker sensitivity and cartridge output. Get those right and you can safely ignore all the others they will have zero impact on your ability to create a fantastically musically satisfying system. Don’t believe me? Come and hear mine.   https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367   

Speaker sensitivity matters because you can use it to screen out speakers that will be hard (read, expensive) to drive. Anything much below 92dB you are better off to leave for others. There are so many fantastic speakers 95dB and up, they all can be driven beautifully with anything from a handful of watts and up. This one measurement, speaker sensitivity, eliminates all concern over how many watts your amp has, whether it is tube or SS, impedance, all that jazz. Drives people who spent years memorizing all this stuff batty to think all they had to do was avoid anything under 92. Oh well. Their problem. Not mine. Not yours either, if you follow this most important of all advice.

Cartridge output matters for the same reason. This more than anything else determines what phono stage you will be able to use, whether or not it will need a step up transformer, how easy or hard (read, expensive) it will be to find a good quality low noise phono stage, on and on.

That’s it. All the rest is window dressing and bragging rights. Guys love to toss the word salad, pour on the dressing. Watch. Pages will follow! Speaker sensitivity. Cartridge output. All else is noise.

I don't put too much faith in them either. One of the first crazy expensive systems I ever heard belonged to this guy who was into "deals". His whole system was a Who's Who of Stereophile Class A picks. All bought used on the basis of being "the best". 

Have you ever seen one of those gags where they swap things around and you're expecting one thing and shocked to get something completely different? I gave him my CD and when the music started I whipped around and hit eject fully expecting to find he had swapped or something. But no, it was my CD.   

All these Stereophile Class A Components combined for the worst sound ever. Horrible, could hardly stand it. No exaggeration.   

Few weeks later we had a party, everyone in my listening room just playing tunes. Couple hours into it this guy's wife sneaks up to me, looks around to make sure no one will hear, and eyes wide in wonder whispers to me, "I could listen to this all night!!!" This was before the hopelessness of digital had become clear to me. We were probably playing a lot of CDs. So it wasn't that. It was the awfulness of the combination of all those Class A Components. 

There are probably some good ones on the list. But I suspect it is more about bragging rights than anything.