I look at randy's reviews from time to time, mostly because I find him nice, he makes me smile, but I wouldn't choose an audio component based on one of his reviews.
But I am glad that he is there, that he is free to make his "sponsor" jokes and that a good audio component should not cost more than a romantic evening for two in a nice restaurant.
I kind of agree with you because at least I hope he influences you. I do a daily (Mon-Fri) deals listing at thebdr.net (shameless plug). It's a radio tech site. As such, I frequently audition equipment for myself (I like to believe I have a decent ear because I've been building great sounding radio stations for decades, but mostly because my two teenaged daughters have been in the Philadelphia Girl's Choir for many years and live acapella music fills my house all day, every day). I find my opinions match his more often than not. That said, I also appreciate measured results as well (Radio has always been based upon measured results because for years we were required to do annual proof of broadcast performance measurements). Along the way I've also built tons of HiFi gear, including Williamson tube amplifiers using 807 tubes, discrete FET preamps and more opamp designs that I will ever remember. My point is simply this: I've been in HiFi for over 50 years, and frankly the current state of HiFi offers the highest value that I have ever seen! And not just amplifiers - look at what you can buy for a couple hundred dollars DAC, speaker and headphone wise. Randy simply finds the best values and lets people know about them. What's wrong with that?
I think that HiFi has split from two to three different branches - the cheap (Not really HiFi) stuff like 2.1 speakers, soundbars, all in one audio systems and Bose. Next (And this didn't really exist before) is what I call Mid HiFi (As opposed to mid fi) which includes companies like Emotiva, Fosi, Aiyima, JDS Labs, Schiit, Monoprice, SMSL, Topping and some others, combined with speakers like Jamo, the cheap Elacs, Sony, the Andrew Jones Pioneers and those other high value speakers mostly sold on Amazon. Finally we have the "Top End" which everyone that has ever read Stereophile already knows about (Megabuck stuff - though companies like Benchmark have shown it really doesn't have to be super expensive). Randy (And I) focus on the Mid HiFi segment, which does represent the highest value that HiFi offers. And that's a pretty good place to be.
