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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: RE: Do you really care about suggested components? posted by mkuller on September 30, 2014 at 15:42:52:
It used to be "The Audio Cheapskate" was the most popular feature. But since Tom Gillette would rather tell travelogues & rave about Internet Radio on his way to the Galloping Senility Ward, there is no such feature anymore, just "Sam's Space" (a mostly barren wasteland, from what I've seen).
If RCL is the most popular feature, it's because it's a poor second choice to Audio Cheapskate.
And as little time as I have for RCL, which is merely a list of ALL the components reviewed in the last year, I suppose its relative popularity has to do with the alternatives:
1) An Audio Mystic F***up who raves about rumbling pottery wheels and $1000 mono cartridges to play his scratchy 78's through speakers that are barely appropriate for making airport announcements
2) A Socks-and-Sandals wussy who thinks his mediocre knowledge of soggy-sounding components makes him a great expert on system building; he's proud of giving advice on $15,000 systems that you can easily beat for less than a tenth of that simply by buying old Luxman or Sansui & nice old Japanese turntable with a Shure cartridge & some Advent or Dynaco or Genesis speakers...
3) A loud-mouthed showoff with a $500,000 stereo who loves vinyl but hates tube amps, never mentions how awful 90% of current pressings are both in sound & pressing quality (he gets all his new releases free, and boasts about it), raves about $50,000 components & boasts about buying them, and is STILL the best reviewer by far because at least he tells you honestly what he thinks & hears, despite his otherwise desperate pandering...
4)A geriatric and filthy-rich Neurosurgeon/Ph.D. with limited auditory & journalistic talents, multiple homes to go with his multiple channels of loud-TV-sound crap; a.k.a. "Home Theatre" Surround Sound. 2 channels is hard enough to get right, 5 channels is impossible, but it doesn't seem to deter him...
5)A music section filled with mostly bad & uninteresting new releases, as reviewed by tin-ears not proficient enough to review components, nonetheless giving their worthless opinions about the sound quality, also virtually never mentioning that most of what they review on vinyl is excessively noisy, horribly made, pre-scratched at the pressing plant, and mastered from a $20 Sony CD player or even a 128kb/s file downloaded from iTunes...
6)An editor who thinks that the "absolute sound" is dead as a review paradigm, but suggests nothing with which to replace it, so he can continue pandering to advertisers which is necessary since the business model is that the magazine is free and readers barely pay for postage. He knows the readers don't value the magazine, or at least the Anodyne Greedhead publisher doesn't, so free magazine=subscriber values & review ethics come dead-nuts dead last...
JGH is dead & John Atkinson dances on his grave.
This would be a fantastic magazine if it was honest enough to rename itself "Stereo Review", because it has none of JGH's values & all of Julian Hirsch's. Likewise, the other jokers across town should rename TAS "Audio", for precisely the same reason.
Knowing what I do now, I could never take Julian Hirsch's or Len Feldman's advice on what constitutes a truly great-sounding audio value. If you feel the same, why would you do so now?
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Follow Ups
- RE: Do you really care about suggested components? - joerosen1 03:10:55 10/02/14 (1)
- Sorry for your loss... - mkuller 10:18:19 10/02/14 (0)
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