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Original Message

To John Atkinson and all the guys in Stereophile

Posted by danlo on July 30, 2004 at 13:14:43:
Let me just say that I find your reviews generally informative and worthwhile . But I wanted to talk about the issue that I find annoying: recommandations.
As I see it - in every field there is a quality curve. And some products are better than others. you should normalize your grading system according to this quality curve so that your scale is correct.
For example, you can rescale all the product grades to be within 0 -10 , so that 0 is the weakest and 10 the best.
Most products are, by definition , avarage, mediocre. Probably about 1/3 of the products are at least "good" , ie. noticebly better than avarage, and so should be recommended. About 1/10 of the products are excellent, and only about 5 percent of all products are truely superb (this word is a superlative, and looses it's meaning otherwise).
I feel that stereophile devides the quality if the following fashion:
~95 percent- recommended
~60 percent- excellent
~40 percent- truely amazing, superb, one of a kind, etc.
~5 percent- avarage or less than avarage, flawed.
some reviewers have the following statistic on the products they review:
~100 percent - recommended
~100 percent - excellent
~95 percent - truely amazing, the best, one of a kind...
~0 percent - avarage or less

I find it difficult to take your conclusions seriously when presented in this fashion .
Danny