Everyone: Read this review from page 61 onward - from this day on they HAD TO WRITE FICTION and not reviews!
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1982-12.pdf
The deal with
SR was that you often had to read between the lines in their equipment reviews. Not infrequently they used weasel-words in their reviews--that is, not telling a lie, but maybe not telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
For instance in that issue, their NAD cassette review, we read:
When we taped interstation FM hiss (at about -20dB), the playback was indistinguishable from the original signal. We could not detect any differences in A/B comparisons between some CDs with maximum level peaks of 0dB and dubs made with Dolby C. One could hardly ask for more!
Well..., actually I think one could ask for more. At least one could ask, "Some CDs? What CDs are 'some' CDs? Was it by any chance an overly compressed and overly processed Rolling Stones recording?
This is not to say that their CD player investigation was lacking. It was done rigorously, and the findings of these controlled listening tests are since validated more times than is now necessary. The problem with
Stereo Review is that the reader back then, putting it all together, was left scratching his head. Wondering, "If there is no difference between a mid-line cassette deck and a CD, why should I bother with CD?" The answer is, if you're listening tastes run between FM hiss at -20dB levels, or if some CDs include Mick and the boys'
Some Girls, then probably there would be no sonic reason for you to switch.
As a result of this kind of copy, back then you'd hear people argue that if
Stereo Review editors couldn't hear the difference between a cassette and a CD, when almost anyone could (given the right source recordings), then why should anyone believe them when they wrote that all amps sound the same? It was not, technically, a fair argument to make against them, but
SR set themselves up for it by not being wholly forthcoming across the board.