Stereophile doubles down on the snake oil!

[Sal1950]

Really? Wow, thats grasping. Saying a power cable increases soundstage is not a view its a lie. Learn the difference.
Is stereopile paying you or are you just a fan boy?

I wonder ???

 

[qirex]

I think no matter how you feel about this kind of reviewing we can all agree that Stereophile can't afford to bribe people.

 

[rdenney]

Yes. Everything makes a huge difference to stereophile, "even my wife in the kitchen hears the difference this power cord makes". Speaker reviews might have some merit but when you cant see the line between bullshit (cable reveiws etc etc) and truth (speakers maybe) how can you believe anything?

This is the main point, it seems to me. Matt says to use some discretion, but the journalist should be the one applying the discretion for making claims that have not be observed with reliability. It places quite a burden on the reader to separate the truthy BS from the similarly worded truthy non-BS, and it seems to me that people who buy ink by the barrel should be the ones capable of and responsible for making that distinction clearly.

So, those of us who really don't need Stereophile can apply that filter because we have a larger view of things and a deeper technical understanding and experience. But those who do need a publication like Stereophile don't have the tools needed to separate the worthy from the unworthy. That alone was probably a pretty good reason to close the comments. But it must be said that the lack of distinction between the evidenced and the unevidenced undermines trust in the whole enterprise. I have no doubt that this has been chewed over with some vigor in the back rooms at the Stereophile world headquarters, and I have no doubt that there has been significant disagreements that have never been fully resolved.

I think I can say all that and still count Kal and John as colleagues in this grand adventure, and cut them slack for the reality they must face, just as my actual professional colleagues cut me some slack because they understand who I work for and the constraints that may place not only on what I can and cannot say but also on the positions I'm required to defend. It's a fallen world, after all, and a little grace goes a long way.

Rick "but really there can be no forgiveness for praising ridiculously expensive power cords" Denney

 

[MattHooper]

Keep in mind I’ve been responding to very specific comments and arguments, especially in regard to Stereophile staff’s motivations.

As to this…

This is the main point, it seems to me. Matt says to use some discretion, but the journalist should be the one applying the discretion for making claims that have not be observed with reliability.

Yes, that falls into what I mentioned before: we can have completely legitimate criticisms of the Stereophile approach. But this doesn’t entail they are lying.

My point about using discretion had to do with the suggestion that it may as well be impossible to garner any useful information from Stereophile due to the overall subjective approach and intermingling of bogus inferences from legitimate ones.

Some people here throw their hands up and say it’s simply not worth their time to try and unravel the truth from the fiction, and so they just don’t take anything Stereophile reviewers say as legitimate or informative.

That to me is a perfectly reasonable stance for anybody here to take, as a matter of personal decisions.

I was just pointing out that it is not necessary for everybody to take that view, and that with some discretion it’s possible to gain some useful insight from Stereophile reviews, even the subjective portion.

I certainly have my quibbles with Stereophile’s methods. But I still get information from Stereophile about products that I am unlikely to find on ASR. So I find both can be useful.

 

[Madlop26]

Stereophile has a DIFFERENT approach, that they really believe in and adhere to:
Measurements don’t necessarily tell the whole story - what ultimately counts is “ how it sounds” to the listener or a reviewer, and subjective

I completely agree what counts is how it sounds... so... it is not better to use a precise electronic device for that important task?, rather than using your limited human hearing? human hearing has too many confounding factors, even your mood and what you are looking can affect a subjective assessment, How can you trust it?? only if you use a strict tedious and most of the time unpractical protocol (blind testing), you can get some reliable results. Humans can no see better than a telescope, cannot measure temperature as precise a thermometer or measure velocity as a speedometer, but still.. I enjoy driving my car fast in summer day looking into the distance, human senses limitations do not decreased enjoyment, especially in music. But there are many that delude themselves to have some type of superpower and the ones who have financial interests.

 

[ahofer]

Stereophile exists to rationalize high end audio purchases without regard to cost or actual audible differences. Which is ok, but it is naive to think of it as something else, and annoying to ask us to accept it as such.

 

[Ken1951]

Stereophile exists to rationalize high end audio purchases without regard to cost or actual audible differences. Which is ok, but it is naive to think of it as something else, and annoying to ask us to accept it as such.

Bingo!

 

[John Atkinson]

So after you measure a speaker with really crap results, the best thing you can say to inform your reader is, (from my earlier post),

"Then onto John Atkinson artfully dodges the bullet over the speakers poor measurements, by calling it "somewhat idiosyncratic" with great care
being needed for placement/setup. "

Somewhat Idiosyncratic ??? Stereophile subscribers deserve better, more honest reporting sir.

I don't think my characterization is dishonest. The farfield response of the AudioNote speaker when positioned in a room corner has the textbook downward slope in the treble and the low frequencies are well-extended - both shown in fig7 in the review's measurements. What is idiosyncratic is the exaggerated upper midrange in that graph and the fact that the tweeter appears to be balanced about 3dB too low in level in the quasi-anechoic response.

With respect, you are looking at just the quasi-anechoic response measurement, not the implications of the entire measured performance, especially the effect of the lateral dispersion, as I discussed in an earlier posting.

Even worst is the speakers are priced at least 10x what they reasonably should cost.
A $65,000 a pair, passive, with one 1" Tweeter, and one 8" field coil woofer, in a 31" x 14" x 10" Birch Plywood monkey coffin ???
What could possible make this thing that expensive?

Please note that I supply the measurements to accompany the reviews in Stereophile. My brief is not to offer opinions on value for money. That is the responsibility of the reviewer, in this case Ken Micallef, and I assume will be examined in the next edition of Recommended Components.

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[manisandher]

I described the suckout as "small" because while it is 5dB deep, it occupies a very narrow bandwidth. Not only will this make it relatively difficult to hear, fig.5 in the measurements sidebar shows that this suckout fills in more than 10° to the speaker's sides. This is relevant because the manufacturer strongly recommends that this speaker not be toed-in to the listening position. With the speaker positioned in a room corner, which is mandated by the manufacturer, and the microphone positioned beyond the Schroeder distance, the suckout is absent. This is shown in fig.7 in the measurements sidebar - see https://www.stereophile.com/content/audio-note-espx-ltd-field-coil-loudspeaker-measurements .

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

Thanks for the explanation.

Mani.

 

[MattHooper]

Stereophile exists to rationalize high end audio purchases without regard to cost or actual audible differences.

Well, it depends exactly what you mean.

But at least the way that is written it still suggests to me a superficial cynicism in place of really trying to understand what what’s going on. And that generalization seems to impugn the motives of reviewers writing for the magazine. And as such, I think it’s worth being more careful.

I don’t recognize your claim with regard to my own experience. As I’ve mentioned before, years ago I did some reviewing and it was never my goal to simply “ justify” whatever manufacturer was asking for a piece of gear.
The motivation was: I’ve listened to a large number of loudspeakers, and I have singled out some that I’m particularly enthusiastic about. I want to share that with other audiophiles… whether they get entertainment or information out of my reviews.

I knew quite a number of reviewers, including those who wrote for other magazines, and that was essentially the motivation for them as well: we get to play with audio gear, some of which we might not even be able to afford, in return for doing the work of all the shipping and setting up of the gear and writing the reviews. And being enthusiasts, we want to share our findings with readers.

I wasn’t aware of a single reviewer I was acquainted with whose goal was “ to justify the price of the gear under review” as if all effort was subverted to that goal.

I still know some reviewers and I do hear a lot of inside stuff in the industry, and some of it is worthy of eye rolling, if not straight out cynical. Humans are humans so I’m not saying people are always angels.

But from what I’ve seen, both from what I know inside the industry as well as reviewers I know, from my own motivations, and from having observed some reviewers overtime… the overriding motivation is generally what I outlined above - getting to hear cool gear and do their best to express to others what they think it sounds like.

The value proposition is usually left up to the reader.

I have tube amplifiers that some here find ridiculous given better technical performance can be had much cheaper. I have speakers that many no doubt believe can be outperformed for significantly less money.

That’s fine. But they are in no position to tell me whether those items are worth it to me. That’s a personal value proposition.
And that’s how most reviewers ultimately leave things.

Even in Stereophile’s recommended components, those are mainly ranked in terms of reviewer impressions, not necessarily measurements or price.
(The forward in their recommended components lists gives all sorts of caveats including : “the reviewer's experience with real music is always the most important factor in assigning ratings”….
“Otherwise, class ratings do not explicitly take price into account.”)

So in general, I don’t think the writers who actually supply most of the content have the goal your comment implies: their goal is to describe as best they can the gear they are reviewing, and when it comes time they may order them in terms of their subjective impressions of performance.

Further, Stereophile measures plenty of gear, and in those measurements the “ pants are pulled down” on plenty of manufacturers - showing for instance how manufacturer specs are inflated sometimes wildly, and plenty of the manufacturer’s technical claims are put to the test, often undermined there as well. If Stereophile as a magazine didn’t want to ruffle any manufacturer feathers at all - if their goal was simply to help manufacturers guild all their claims and sell equipment rather than serve readers at all, why would they include so many measurements that can expose the claims of these manufacturers? And certainly JA himself has often commented about some of the dubious measurements. (still leaving the value equation up to the reader).

Which is ok, but it is naive to think of it as something else, and annoying to ask us to accept it as such.

Well… some people also might find being asked to accept superficial or possibly misleading claims about the goal of a magazine staff to be fairly annoying as well.

 

[DMill]

I personally still enjoy Stereophile for giving me a broader view of audio gear. I’ve always thought the gear was cool so I get to hear about crazy $100k turntables I have no interest in but are fun to read about. To me it’s like reading USA Today vs reading the New York Times. It’s fun little snippets of the audio world that I don’t have to think too much about. Personally, I always appreciated JA for the measurements to see what we are really talking about. I never much busted his balls if he was diplomatic. In some ways reviews here or Erin’s site that have a subjective impressions could be argued as anti-scientific and could have personal bias.

 

[lc6]

I described the suckout as "small" because while it is 5dB deep, it occupies a very narrow bandwidth. Not only will this make it relatively difficult to hear, fig.5 in the measurements sidebar shows that this suckout fills in more than 10° to the speaker's sides. This is relevant because the manufacturer strongly recommends that this speaker not be toed-in to the listening position. With the speaker positioned in a room corner, which is mandated by the manufacturer, and the microphone positioned beyond the Schroeder distance, the suckout is absent. This is shown in fig.7 in the measurements sidebar - see https://www.stereophile.com/content/audio-note-espx-ltd-field-coil-loudspeaker-measurements .

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

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 more importantly
acoustically, however, we generally recommend placing the loudspeakers in corners or at least against a solid rear or side wall; this is the best ‘starting point’ to work from.
If bass performance is too strong, slowly move the loudspeakers further into the room, making sure that the distance between the rear and side walls remains the same for
both loudspeakers."

Yet, the summary of the review noted that "the response in the midrange is uneven." Midrange is typically defined as 250 to 5000 Hz. The suckout is between 3 and 4 kHz.

 

[Sal1950]

Stereophile exists to rationalize high end audio purchases without regard to cost or actual audible differences. Which is ok, but it is naive to think of it as something else, and annoying to ask us to accept it as such.

Amen, The reviews always give a positive result about equal to the products cost. Five figure cable and power cords being very high in the "Recommended Components" list. Rave reviews for poorly measuring, 10x over priced monkey box speakers, in some light this could be considered a criminal deception..

Well… some people also might find being asked to accept superficial or possibly misleading claims about the goal of a magazine staff to be fairly annoying as well.

If it's true, that is very open to debate.
You do a good job of always laying out a 500+ word post in support of their subjective positions.
But not providing any real solid evidence in it.

 

[SIY]

You do a good job of always laying out a 500+ word post in support of their subjective positions.

I'll defend subjectivity. That's extremely useful and important.

Lack of basic controls and hypocritical justifications for refusing to use them... that's where we transition from "difference of opinion" to "outright dishonesty."

 

[Short38]

I may be mistaken but I believe this horse is deceased

 

[whereisbrian]

You have to remember the title of this thread.

I rarely read Stereophile except to get an additional opinion on a piece of equipment I was considering purchasing.

The height of this deviation was the funny and famous MQA affair.

 

[kemmler3D]

People here essentially asking Stereophile or John A to say “ this is a piece of crap” STILL don’t get it. It’s amazing.

It’s not simply some nefarious protection of advertisers.

It’s that Stereophile REALLY DOES have a different approach to reviewing gear than ASR.

A place like ASR takes a measurement/criteria-driven approach: whether it’s electronics or loudspeakers there’s a criteria held as “good measurements” against which all things are judged, and this criteria is used to judge equipment “ good or bad” or “ better or worse.”

Stereophile has a DIFFERENT approach, that they really believe in and adhere to:
Measurements don’t necessarily tell the whole story - what ultimately counts is “ how it sounds” to the listener or a reviewer, and subjective impressions are the ultimate arbiter. JA himself has numerous times indicated that he found some loudspeakers to still sound quite compelling, despite anomalies he has measured.

Loudspeakers are not evaluated ultimately on how they measure, but rather how they sound to the reviewer(s). Stereophile is not about saying “ we have a criteria by which we’re going to judge speakers great or crap” but rather “ there’s a great many different speaker designs out there, we are going to investigate them and tell you how they sound. If our descriptions are accurate enough, you can get an idea as to whether the speaker will appeal to you or not.”

That’s why, to the degree stereophile ends up ranking speakers at all in recommended components, they are clearly ranked by the subjective impressions and not on the measurements.

Does JA after all this time have some personal views of how he would generally like to see an amplifier or speaker measure - certain best practises he himself would prefer to see a show up in the measurements?

No doubt. And this often shows up in his comments, in the measurement section.
He will talk about things that he found troubling, or that might make a device a bit more finicky to use, etc.

But he’s NOT there in the measurements generally speaking to renter verdict like “ this is a piece of crap.” The measurements are there for you the reader to render that judgment if you are measurements driven and that’s how you feel.

But it’s not how Stereophile is ranking things, and it’s not how JA wants things ranked either clearly as he was the editor of Stereophile for so many years and it was clear the subjective impressions were given precedence through this whole time.

Of course anyone at ASR can reject this approach as obviously most here do.

But this strange hand-ringing over “ why doesn’t John Atkinson explicitly trash a loudspeaker with some wonky measurements in the measurement section” is just a manifest failure to understand the sincere difference in approach Stereophile staff takes to evaluating audio gear.

All fine in the context of speakers, and well stated as far as that goes, but this approach is not a great cover for subjective reviewing of gear where science has effectively ruled out audible impact on the listener experience.

 

[MattHooper]

All fine in the context of speakers, and well stated as far as that goes, but this approach is not a great cover for subjective reviewing of gear where science has effectively ruled out audible impact on the listener experience.

Why not though?

My post spoke to the likely intent of the Stereophile staff.

Somebody listening in sighted conditions wouldn’t be immune to bias effects whatever they are listening to. That is after all how people imagine differences between things like ethernet cables, and all sorts of stuff.

And if you have the mindset that listening in such conditions is the best way to evaluate gear, then you’re going to have the same phenomenon whatever gear somebody is evaluating.

So the Stereophile reviewers could be just as sincere in believing they hear a difference between cables or whatever, as anything else. Flawed methods produce flawed results. It does not therefore require the mindset of “ simply working in cahoots with advertisers in order to justify their high prices” which was the type of accusation I’ve been addressing.

This is sort of what I meant when I said earlier, there’s a strange disconnect that sometimes happens: we are constantly pointing out on ASR that everybody is susceptible to sighted bias, and this is how plenty of audiophiles come to sincere but mistaken beliefs in pseudoscience… and yet when it comes to ASR views of subjective reviewers it seems there’s a leapfrog over “ sincerely taken in by a bias effect” right to “lying” (and from that some sort of hidden alternative motives).

 

[Sal1950]

I may be mistaken but I believe this horse is deceased

There's always a resurrection.
Stereophile publishes a big, beautify illustrated 150 pages or so each month.

The height of this deviation was the funny and famous MQA affair.

And if your reading them, they are still praying, now at the alter of Lenbrook that it gets resurrected too.
They really hate it and can't understand that even their rank and file turned their backs on it.
"What do you mean you don't want lossy proprietary codec's controlling your music???"

All fine in the context of speakers, and well stated as far as that goes, but this approach is not a great cover for subjective reviewing of gear where science has effectively ruled out audible impact on the listener experience.

Kind-of but falling back to my original post on this

Even worst is the speakers are priced at least 10x what they reasonably should cost.
A $65,000 a pair, passive, with one 1" Tweeter, and one 8" field coil woofer, in a 31" x 14" x 10" Birch Plywood monkey coffin ???
What could possible make this thing that expensive?

At least company's like Magico can show off their all aluminum, extremely rigid cases, or custom made carbon fiber ones and AFAIR always measure very well.
"As with the other Magico loudspeakers Stereophile has reviewed, the M2 offers excellent measured performance.—John Atkinson"
But $65,000 for a Plywood box ??? How is that justifiable.

 

[kemmler3D]

Why not though?

Because professional reviewers (IMO) should know how the gear works to a reasonable extent beyond laypeople, and be aware of sighted bias as the likely cause of heard differences where no other plausible tangible cause can be proposed.

Going one step further, it's not really ok to write a review of gear based primarily on your sighted biases, (even if everyone knows what's going on including the readers) because you have no way of knowing if the readers sighted bias will produce a similar heard difference for them. It calls into question of whether the writing can function as a review as we know it.

It does rise to the level of irresponsible IMO because they're positioning personal experiences driven by sighted bias as a reason to spend material sums of money. If it were about ice cream flavors and not $x,xxx+ cables it would be fine.

So even if you accept that it's all in genuine good faith I think "irresponsible" is fair. Car reviewers should know that the mythical car that runs on water isn't real and audio reviewers should know that cables don't normally have a material impact on the signal. How many excuses am I expected to make for that?