Stereophile seems a little different in it's recommended components column from what it used to be. It used to be that class 'a' was "the best sound quality attainable", at least in one area or another. And class 'b' was considered highly capable. Now it seems that anything highly capable is class 'a'. So, they need to create a new class when they get excited about something.
I have lost a little respect for the rag as a result of this. They aren't the sound quality renegades they used to be. They used to openly debate amongst themselves on how good various products were, and some whether they were good or not. Now they are just to polite, never taking a chance of offending anybody with a review or just an honest take on something if it could possibly be taken the wrong way. They used to depend on the intelligence of the reader, something I appreciated, and used for my benifit, but now I use a lot af that intelligence in guessing on how thorough some of the recommendations and reviews may be. In the past, it seemed that, as intelligent readers, we were supposed to keep in mind the taste and opinions of the reviewer, as being different, or possibly close, to ours, and we were supposed to make up our own minds, and as readers let reviewers make up thiers. Lately, It seems that pure objectivity is being shorted for preserving the possibility that a manufacturer might not be shorted or for the credibility of the reviewer being challenged or lessened in favor of limited, but safer, universal, credibility.
Go ahead and read the "how ratings are determined" section, and then check out what is in the various 'classes', and you will find too many inconsistancies to find it credible. (Evan as it was never intended to be perfect).
I still, however, really enjoy reading Stereophile, and I still find it well written. And I still find valueable info and insight from it. I especailly dig M.F.
