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In Reply to: RE: Can the Audio Research VTM150 story finally be told? posted by John Atkinson on June 17, 2017 at 16:20:53
Yes I meant the VTM200. With respect, it seems you are remaining a tad mum. Did you have any idea ARC would take so long to forgive the magazine? How is it that Mikey, who was not much of a tube guy at the time, got assigned the review?
Did that play a role in ARC's dissatisfaction? Were efforts made to smooth things over? And most of all, why couldn't ARC accept the simple truth that from time to time they have launched a dud? I recall a VT100 that received a rave review in Stereophile a year or two before the VTM200 review that an awful lot of consumers could not get to sound good in their system. And with apologies for so much drivel on my part, but is it possible, even likely, that there was an unfortunate convergence of audiophiles returning to tubes-much like the recent return to vinyl-without adequate experience as to optimum set-up and matching of components-again as with vinyl?
Follow Ups:
> Yes I meant the VTM200. With respect, it seems you are remaining a tad mum.
I thought responding to you promptly on a weekend revealed my willingness
not to remain "mum."
Looking at the list of Audio Research products we reviewed, the next one
following Michael Fremer's review of the VTM200 in January 2001, was Robert
Deutsch on the VS110 power amplifier and SP16L preamplifier in August 2003.
The gap was thus 2 1/2 years, not the 10 years you mentioned in your original
post.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Just to dot the Ts and cross the Is, I have added the Manufacturer's
Comment to the Web reprint of our Audio Research VTM200 review.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
John-like many others I'm sure, I feel that your regular participation in this forum "makes" the forum. But I suspect the story I seek is one I would only hear from a select handful of industry insiders in private or over a pint or three. The topic of negative reviews and advertising is so well-worn as to be tiresome. But as an avid reader of your magazine since the Larry Archibald days, I recall this incident as being relatively epic despite the various mistakes that you have [duly] corrected. We all know that outside of your measurements of digital and tubed pieces, most reviews are positive or glowing for multiple well-grounded reasons. In the context of the rare negative subjective listening impression, It is one thing to provide a negative review of a relatively unknown manufacturer's product that is not advertised and another to be critical of a product from arguably the world's most vaunted manufacturer that has regularly advertised. I have zero doubt there is a lot more to this story that would be interesting to us peons
"It has often been our own experience that when a new component of higher resolution is inserted into an existing audio chain, the "cleaner window" is itself blamed for pre-existing limitations the new component is in fact revealing."
That's exactly what I would have said! ;-)
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