Catering to those who can buy multi-million homes in terms of their item selections, TAS and Stereophile provide no value to those who will not mortgage their homes for any of the recommended items to build a “credible” system.
As someone who has found value in Stereophile reviews, I disagree. And I cannot buy $1 million homes, nor did I have to mortgage anything to buy my equipment.
Additionally, for those who could afford the recommendations there is no ability to elucidate, other than the steep prices, the benefits of one expensive piece of “jewelry” over another.
Again, I disagree. It’s easy to not find any value if you don’t want to find it, but it’s there for those who want to find it.
I bought my benchmark pre-amplifier partially based on Stereophile’s review, which showed bleeding edge, technical performance, and engineering competency. Same with my benchmark DAC reviewed in Stereophile.
And of course there’s measurements accompanying just about every one of their speaker reviews.
When you say, there’s no ability to elucidate between one expensive bit of gear and another, again it matters, whether you actually put an effort to do that or not.
I find Stereophile subjective descriptions of loudspeakers can be quite informative and helpful. For instance, Michael Freemer’s original review of the audio physic Virgo speaker lead me to seek out those speakers, and they sounded to me precisely as he described, and where incredibly rewarding in just the way he described. And that led me to having a number of audio physics speakers in my home, which I found immensely satisfying.
I could say the same for a number of other different loudspeakers, I’ve auditioned and owned.
I find that when I come across a reviewer, who is good at putting sound into words, and who seems interested in some of the sonic characteristics that I’m really looking for, and if they have any other reviews provided descriptions that match products, I know well, and/or seem to triangulate with what other audiophiles are describing, then I gain some confidence in that reviewers descriptions. And usually once I have a chance to hear a loudspeaker they have reviewed, I find the review captured some essential characteristics of the loudspeaker quite well.
Michael Freemer has absolutely nailed some of the sonic characteristics of speakers I owned. Herb Reichart has also elucidated exactly the type of differences I hear between loudspeaker brands I’ve owned.
(for instance he’s compared Joseph audio speakers to Harbeth speakers , and having owned both I find easier in on precisely the relevant differences I heard). Art Dudley picked up on characteristics of a certain loudspeaker brand that is disparaged here on their design and measurements. The type of Sonic characteristics Dudley described intrigued me - he was looking for the type of sonic character I was looking for.
And when I auditioned the loudspeaker several times, I was utterly blown away, and they became one of my favourites, displaying some of the characteristics Art Dudley had captured in his review. I almost bought the loudspeakers, but their form factor wouldn’t work for my room. I would never have been led to such enjoyable encounters with those loudspeakers via a place like ASR that would not be interested in such speakers, or would just dismiss them based on the design measurements.
(somebody here, looked at the measurements and said the speakers would “ sound like a kazoo” which was as far from how they actually sounded as could be)
So I have found my audiophile life quite enhanced by reading Stereophile and other audio magazines. So have a huge number of other audiophiles. It’s certainly true that there is also plenty of bs to navigate in that space, and that many audiophiles have also been misled into believing nonsense. But it’s not all bs IMO, and plenty of audiophiles have systems they find to be hugely satisfying based on looking at subjective reviews and reports. And not every audiophile falls for every bit of nonsense. I think the subjective review space can be navigated fairly successfully, you don’t have to be a dupe and believe absolutely everything (after all, there are a fair amount of contrasting opinions, even on this site to navigate), and I think a fair amount of audiophiles have navigated that space to achieve satisfying systems.
And many of those systems would never have shown up on ASR.
