Critic's Corner

Posted by Halcy (A) on May 30, 2004 at 11:15:14

In Reply to: My take on Stereophile posted by J-PMatt@Comcast.Net on May 25, 2004 at 15:40:44:

I appreciate people's opinions and share many of them myself.

I don't subscribe to Stereophile (anymore), but I think their measurements are the benchmark in this industry.

Granted, listening is beyond measurements, but often in toilet paper publications like What Hifi a totally apallingly measuring piece of equipment can get excellent reviews. Why? I don't think they even listen to those equipment and I know they don't measure them. So, they can just feed the readers pretty much any baloney the marketing department of the manufacturer wants. No wonder it's the world's biggest selling fifi publication.

But I digress, back to S'phile.

With Stereophile's measurements I can always look at the off-axis measurements of a loudspeaker and have an educated guess how it's going to behave in smaller, less damped rooms.

Also, when a reviewer constantly raves how "revealing" some speakers are and I can read about their horrible treble peaks (in the measurements), I know what I might hear when I listened to them myself.

This saves me a lot of trouble as I can use the measurements and my own experience to calibrate between many reviewers opinions.

Also, products that are just badly designed, stand out in the measurements section. As do products with superior designs.

I think we should be proud that there is still a magazine like Stereophile that spends so much time doing thorough and time consuming measurements IN ADDITION to listening tests.

If you compare Stereophile to almost ANY competition (worldwide), it pretty much stomps the competition in this regard.

So, kudos to John Atkinson and the rest of the S'phile crew in this regard.