Laugh all you will at Stereophile, and there's a lot to laugh over, but if it wasn't for Atkinson, no one would know.
Thank you. The mystery is that not just
Stereophile's reviewer, but others had auditioned the same samples of the Infigo amplifier that the magazine reviewed and that I measured at audio shows and at a listening event at VPI and no-one heard any problems, I discussed this paradox at the end of the review's Measurements section:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/infigo-method-3-monoblock-power-amplifier-measurements
You'd have thought the editor, or whoever is running that circus, would have pulled the copy before it hit the stands, once the lab report came in. At least that way, they wouldn't look like total fools. But I guess there's no insight into reality over there, or they just don't care.
Soon after joining
Stereophile in the late 1980s I implemented the policy that once a manufacturer or distributor has submitted a sample of a product for review, the review would
always be published. As I wrote in the essay linked to below, "Once a writer has embarked upon a review for
Stereophile, nothing can stop that review from eventually appearing in print....If a product sounds bad but appears to be working properly, then we will proceed with the review on the grounds that it is typical of production. If it eventually turns out that a loudspeaker's crossover was wired incorrectly, or that the wrong transistors were installed, or that the hum was due to a production fault, we will happily review the corrected version, but [the magazine's readers] will always learn about the original problem....[T]hey need to know that a manufacturer can't always supply a working sample, even when the user will be a reviewer.
"If a product does turn out to be faulty, or just doesn't work out of the box, we ask for a second sample....Similarly, when a manufacturer asks if he can send an updated version, we comply on the grounds that we need to be able to describe the most recent sample for the review to be relevant. However, the writers are instructed to include in their reviews
all their experience with
all the samples they've received, not just the most recent or best-functioning...The magazine's primary responsibility is to its readers. Ergo, quality-control problems must be reported in the review, and to make exceptions for some companies would be both inconsistent and unfair."
See
https://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1105awsi/index.html
Stereophile's current editor, Jim Austin, continues this policy, hence the publication of the Infigo review. Infigo has promised to send new samples of the amplifier that
are working correctly and the magazine will publish a follow-up review.
John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile