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Well said. The keywords here are anecdotal evidence. There is nothing wrong with stating personal impressions of audio equipment, whether it comes to performance or aesthetics. In fact, these impressions are part of an audiophile ritual, which many follow in their pursuit of acoustic perfection...

I agree in that your refusal to provide an honest answer to a simple question warranted by your prior posts, as well as your endless lengthy rants pretending to be "arguments," make any further exchange unnecessary.

Yet another winded response that goes to great lengths to justify what Stereophile does. Judging by yet another like from JA, and the fact that you seem to know so much much about and advocate for their approach to reviewing products, and have admitted to knowing reviewers, what is your actual...

I would pay for a subscription if such a publication reviewed components I am truly interested in for potential purchase. Personally, I have little interest in 100s of standalone DACs, the vast majority of which are based on the same ESS, AKM or Cirrus chips; little Class D amps with external...

Lots of words about reviewing "philosophy" and "tastes," in an attempt to wiggle out of not sticking to facts, which are that (a) Stereophile rankings are incomplete in that they do not include gradation of reviewed products that are not on the recommended component lists, and (b) your...

Well, if it is not about ranking things, then how come there are published classes of recommended components: "Class A Best attainable sound for a component of its kind, almost without practical considerations; the least musical compromise. Class B The next best thing to the very best sound...

As with almost everything in nature, the audio components should follow a normal (Gaussian) distribution in terms of evaluation and ratings. How many of Stereophile reviews actually explicitly stated "this component is below average, so we do not recommend it"? And how many ASR reviews did, at...

The placement of the speaker in a room corner is not "mandated" but merely "generally recommended" by the manufacturer as a "starting point": "Some experimentation is advised when choosing a suitable location to obtain the best performance ‘in room’. All rooms are different, both physically and...

The general issue with all those "professional" reviews is the personal qualifications and capability of reviewers. Are we to believe that the hearing of a guy in his mid-60s is still as good as his (supposedly perfect) hearing in his teens? Unless such reviewers present verifiable results of...

See the last comment here.

As I wrote before, JVS has never seen expensive components that did not miraculously change the digital content while operating purely in the lowest layers of the OSI stack: "Ultimately, the Nazaré stack will include three boxes: the server/streamer itself, which is entering production; the...

What about the "recommended component" lists -- aren't those an enticement to purchase particular products, based on subjective evaluations which, for the most part, defy the laws of physics? Consider, for example, the desriptions of various cables.

Huh! This is an excellent idea for further product differentiation and price premia -- different cables for different encodings and music genres. And they would have to be accompanied by a commensurately priced switch (one per channel, of course) with which an audiophool could remotely select...

JVS feeds his audience this kind of HS in almost all of his reviews. There isn't an overpriced power cable, mains conditioner, Ethernet switch, USB reclocker or a similar totally unnecessary device that did not alter bits in digital audio such that he heard an improvement.

The only thing that comes to mind is a rig with inductive impedance loads (simulating typical power amp loads) that could draw kilowatts without getting burned and could get connected electronically to the PS with relatively high frequency, i.e. not via mechanical relays (maybe via a triac or a...

So, first @Speedskater uses the argument of 10x the 15 A branch circuit current to counteract my post, then @Cbdb2 ridicules said 150 A current, then @Cbdb2 likes the @Speedskater post. Get your act together.

Sure, according to a typical breaker trip curve. But what about the voltage drop in such conditions? Consider a typical AWG 14 copper wire supplying a 15 A wall socket. Assuming a typical 25 ft branch circuit length, the loop resistance is 2 x 25 / 1000 x 2.525 = 0.12625 Ohm. So if you put 10 x...

It depends on how much stored energy the device (i.e. amp) has in its PS caps and what the number of channels and power per channel are. Some with linear PS have only 2 x 10 mF caps, others, esp. high-end monoblocks, boast as much as 2 x 100 mF caps or more. Class D amps, typically fed by SMPS...

Apart from reduction of the mains noise and harmonics, these type of devices frequently claim that they provide more instantanous power than a regular wall socket does, thanks to the energy stored in their built-in capacitors and/or batteries which their inverters can draw (e.g., see here). In...

There is so much misinformation on speaker cables floating around, even from well known publications. Consider this one, published today: "Take the usual passive loudspeaker–amplifier connection. At its simplest, it comprises a pair of insulated wires a few meters long of moderate—say, half an...