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TAS, Stereophile Ad Practices and other issues

Have you noticed that on several occasions certain advertisers, and in particular a specific audio dealer, publish ads in Stereophile featuring specific products that they carry which are receiving a rave review in the same issue of the magazine? I have noticed this several times in Stereophile, for instance with the Boulder Digital Preamp.

Does this mean that the magazines are circulating the reviews to potential advertisers ahead of publication? Would this be an ethical practice? I noticed for the first time that this same thing happened in the "new" TAS with the MIT Oracle cables review, where one particular advertiser actually quoted from the review itself in the ad that appeared in the same issue. I guess that since TAS publishes its content in the internet ahead of time one could argue advertisers can legitimately decide to advertise without having unduly influenced the reviewers. In any event it would be good if these "consumer" magazines clarified this aspect of their advertising practices.

By the way, I believe the quality of TAS has dropped dramatically with Mr. Harley as editor. This includes the following dissappointments in recent issues:
- no more comments from a second reviewer
- almost no controversial reviews
- where is REG?
- a shallow classification of components, in its first installment focusing on amplifiers, which seems like the flip side of Stereophile's classes, where "Class A" is awarded pretty lightly. In the case of TAS only stuff which costs more than $20K is worthy of "Class 1" (where is, for instance, the Marsh A 400S which at $2.5K REG though was "as good as amplifiers costing as much as houses"?)
- a bunch of less than convincing new reviewers
- a home-theater magazine like feel
- etc etc




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Topic - TAS, Stereophile Ad Practices and other issues - hexenboden 14:09:44 06/11/02 (46)


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