Stereophile Recommended Components 2024

[GXAlan]

Recommended Components Fall 2024 Edition

Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable. Occasionally we get letters of complaint from manufacturers who object to being included in, say, Class Bbut inclusion in Class B is a thing to be proud of.

www.stereophile.com

One of the highlights is seeing the Storm Audio ISP Evo getting A+ for digital processors not just for theater use.

For amps, AHB2 and Schiit Tyr in A class.

I think the speaker list is interesting in showing how preferences can deviate. B&W for example has the ability to make neutral speakers but chooses not to and in the rooms that the listeners are choosing they do seem to like it.

Importantly, many of the reviewers probably have lost their high frequency hearing so the uptilt may not be as noxious in blind testing as compared to the measurements might predict. The strengths of the rest may translate into a good experience.

The one missing part of audio science is *how* stereo imaging masks frequency response irregularities. We know that mono listening helps distinguish speakers and what is preferred in mono is also preferred in stereo, but I would imagine that there may be ways to enhance the masking effect of stereo and one analysis of the B&W treble involves how much HF gets thrown backward.

 

[JiiPee]

The article is pure audiophool BS.

 

[GXAlan]

The article is pure audiophool BS.

And yet, for the speakers and most of the electronics there, you have a full set of measurements from @John Atkinson

Can’t say that about many other recommended lists…

 

[Oddball]

OMA K3: $363,000 including power supply and Schröder SLM tonearm

Lol, I stopped reading after this one. This would be a budget to build state of the art (without need to save or compromise) 11.8.6 HT and then leave plenty for installation, fixtures and top video line with 200" screen. Or even better to spend 20% and to add the rest to a retirement account...

 

[DVDdoug]

may not be as noxious in blind testing

Is Stereophile now doing blind listening tests? Last I heard, they "didn't believe in it".

OMA K3: $363,000 including power supply and Schröder SLM tonearm

Lol, I stopped reading after this one.

Any talk of vinyl lowers credibility with me. I grew-up with it and never really "liked it", even though it was the best thing we had.

 

[dtaylo1066]

I certainly noticed the low price of most of the recommended components. I can afford, or would actually pay for, about 6 of the components listed.

I used to subscribe to Stereophile years ago. As a basic, mostly subjective review rag it is OK, but the reader demo HH income must surely dwarf mine by a factor of 10, and I have no use for, or interest in, reviews of equipment that costs as much as a car or condo. How many 150K DACs are being sold in a year?

With the prevalence of YouTube audio reviews, most of which focus on affordable or semi-affordable gear, rags like Stereophile are becoming very narrow and niche in their audience and appeal.

I give Kudos to Kal, who posts on this Forum, as I always enjoyed the many real world components he reviewed.

 

[JiiPee]

And yet, for the speakers and most of the electronics there, you have a full set of measurements from @John Atkinson

Can’t say that about many other recommended lists…

Sure, and I agree that John Atkinsons measurements put Stereophile generally speaking on a somewhat more respectable level than many other audio stuff publications, but that article is still full of unsubstantiated claims of the most ridiculous kind.

 

[GXAlan]

Is Stereophile now doing blind listening tests? Last I heard, they "didn't believe in it".

There is the idiom about “throwing out the baby with the bath water” that seems appropriate here.

Stereophile:Editor-in-chief::United States:Commander-in-chief.

Does the United States believe in _______? Depends which 4 year interval you are looking at.

In the 80’s, Stereophile spent some time to discuss blind testing.

The Highs & Lows of Double-Blind Testing

Editor's Note: In 1985 and 1986, an argumentative thread ran through Stereophile's pages, discussing the benefits or lack of double-blind testing methods in audio component reviewing, triggered by J. Gordon Holt's review of the ABX Comparator. As this debate is still raging nearly 15 years...

www.stereophile.com

Blind Listening

John Atkinson sets the stage Nothing seems to polarize people as much as the vexed question concerning the importance of audible differences between amplifiers. If you think there are subjective differences, you're an audiophile; if you don't, you're not.

www.stereophile.com

But they also invested a lot of time in measuring speakers

JA on Loudspeaker Measurements

Author's Note: Although I started accompanying Stereophile's loudspeaker reviews with measurements soon after I joined the magazine in 1986, it wasn't until 1989, when we acquired an Audio Precision System One electronics analyzer and the then-new MLSSA speaker measurement system from DRA Labs...

www.stereophile.com

And in more modern era, you can definitely see proponents of blind testing in Stereophile

Blind Listening at Harman International

Revel began demonstrating prototypes of the Performa F228Be, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, at the Consumer Electronics Show and other audio events in 2015, though they had yet to settle on the model name.

www.stereophile.com

 

[dtaylo1066]

J.Sikora Reference: $48,000 w/o tonearm

For 48K you think they could toss in a tonearm. A total system of price related components might cost 300-500K. How many people are dumping that on a stereo? Not that many are spending 3-5K. Silly.

 

[Ageve]

 

[JiiPee]

J.Sikora Reference: $48,000 w/o tonearm

For 48K you think they could toss in a tonearm. A total system of price related components might cost 300-500K. How many people are dumping that on a stereo? Not that many are spending 3-5K. Silly.

High price is the main selling point of these things. They are aimed at the kind of buyer to whom the most important feature is that he can say "I put half a million dollars on that HiFi set".

 

[GXAlan]

You can single out the whole page of recommended cables, for sure, but lets not ignore stuff like:

Class A

And besides performance, you know that they have also done this bit of screening:

“Companies that sell only through dealers must have well-established dealer networks. Products sold online also qualify, but companies that sell only online must demonstrate the capacity for satisfactory customer support.”

 

[DSJR]

I wonder if JA might be feeling pushed out these days? Any Stereophile review I've looked at, has always been the measuremets only, as the subjective pages of the rest of the reviews is only one step removed from The Absolute Sound's 'Why write a paragraph when a page or two of puff and bullsh*t will do?'

I'm definitely not an audiophile these days...

 

[MattHooper]

Here we go: The annual Stereophile recommended components chum, tossed into the ASR shark tank.

As usual, there will be plenty of overpriced stuff to lambaste.

I like to keep in mind that Stereophile has a different approach to audio gear.

ASR takes a single criteria based approach on which to rate gear essentially “ good or bad.” (as in: here is a suite of measurements that would indicate best practises. To the degree gear deviates from this it is a bad design)

Stereophile takes the view that there are legitimate different approaches to designing equipment and different sonic profiles, and they don’t rate them “ good or bad” but rather to tell you how they sound. And then the consumer can decide whether that sounds interesting or not to pursue.

Of course, these annual recommended components do attempt a rating of one sort, but their approach is going to mean that, for instance, speakers that would be dismissed on ASR can be rated highly in Stereophile.

There’s obvious liabilities in Stereophile’s approach that everyone here recognizes.

But I’m glad both approaches exist as I can get something out of each.

 

[Purité Audio]

You don’t think that money may have changed hands?
Keith

 

[USER]

I wonder if JA might be feeling pushed out these days? Any Stereophile review I've looked at, has always been the measuremets only, as the subjective pages of the rest of the reviews is only one step removed from The Absolute Sound's 'Why write a paragraph when a page or two of puff and bullsh*t will do?'

Absolutely not. He partakes in that subjective nonsense as well. Here's the conclusion to his review of the Audioquest Jitterbug. His positions could not be more clear. He did a lot of good decades ago to be sure, but we have to stop romanticizing salesmen.

Conclusions
You can see from the "Measurements" sidebar that I could find no significant effect that the JitterBug had on the analog signals output by three of the DACs I had to hand. Yet with those DACs and others, I heard an improvement in sound quality that I can attribute only to the JitterBug. I hate when that happens!

Last June, Michael Lavorgna wrote that "measurements obviously have no direct correlation to enjoyment." I have no hesitation in declaring, loudly and longly, that I can think of no way to spend $49 that would make me more enjoy my computer-based audio than the AudioQuest JitterBug. Try one—or two—for yourself.

In a serious objectivity-oriented context, like medicine or academia, a statement analogous to this would (rightfully) end a career.

AudioQuest JitterBug USB noise filter

www.stereophile.com

AudioQuest JitterBug USB Filter Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the AudioQuest JitterBug USB data and power noise filter. It is on kind loan from a member. The Jitterbug costs US $60 from Amazon including prime shipping. I purchased a JitterBug back in 2015 when it had recently come out and my measurements...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Multicore]

When in 2018 I was in the market for some new kit I read several Herb Reichert articles in Stereophile. I thought him a funny and engaging writer. I remember one of the stories he related was about an argument he got in in which he claimed to have insisted that he was not an audiophile. Some of the gear he wrote about wasn't crazy spendy but everything he wrote about subjective appreciation of anything was completely incomprehensible. I thought that was quite funny for a while and then got bored with it.

 

[voodooless]

And yet, for the speakers and most of the electronics there, you have a full set of measurements from @John Atkinson

Which are totally irrelevant to the curation of the list.

 

[Multicore]

Stereophile:Editor-in-chief::United States:Commander-in-chief.

It's grade inflation in job titles. Every writer at a US publication is at least an editor so the person who is in fact the editor has that funny title. Same deal in the armed services where there are quite a few commanders. At a bank anyone above janitor and intern is at least a vice president. It seems silly but really it's just another regional and sectoral language peculiarity.

 

[Chrispy]

Haven't bothered with one of their "recommended" lists for many years, just not worth much.