The MoFi Mess and TAS rolling over for them

Great point yoyoyaya! If these recordings become digitized anyway, why then go to the trouble to "store them" on vinyl at all? It's probably the worst medium to do so that can add nothing but distortion. I guess it's all about appearances & perception.......

For many years now, I've considered The Absolute Sound simply to be a "high end" boutique magazine like the fancy design &  fancy boating - mega yacht publications. They're fun to look at & see what's out there but offer little to no objectivity on what they review even though TAS has made an effort to regularly cover more reasonably priced stuff in recent years. 

How can you truly learn anything useful from a review that doesn't mention what ancillary equipment is being used & never makes any direct comparisons to similarly equipment in design/ build and/ or price?

The only occasional exception is Steven Stone who can be better at that & now seems to primarily focus on "bargain priced" equipment which I think is appreciated by many of us. It's to bad too because I think many of the TAS writers do know a great deal about hi fi & have lots of experience that would be helpful to many of us.