Like Playboy, I only read Stereophile for the ah, LOLAfter subscribing to Stereophile since the 80s I have weaned myself over the last year or so. My subscription still has a few more months but I haven't read the last 6+ issues. ASR confirms a lot of what I felt/ suspected. Gear prices kept skyrocketing and the benefits were dubious at best. Some past writers were entertaining, but there has been an increasing gap between reviewer claims and JA's measurements that gets glossed over. And I do not enjoy Mr Austin's essays.
I do enjoy the music reviews but TAS is much superior in that, at least the number of reviews and interviews with artists.
Since Jim Austin took over, I feel the mag has take a turn for the worse. Maybe due to our influence, maybe not, but as the topic of
this thread points out there seems to be a level of paranoia in his writing that wasn't visible from J Atkinson. So many of his front page "As We See It" have been written from what I feel was a very defensive posture towards the objective community.
Thankfully I just got the December issue yesterday and this month he filled the whole page talking about his new dog Ella Wren. Yes, seriously. LOL