I was thinking about this topic again yesterday as the digital version of Stereophile arrived and wondering why I was so gracious about the magazine, especially since I bought the musical fidelity XCan V8P that Sam Tellig described as a wonderful headphone pre amp, connected to my amp and immediately blew my speakers...ah sonicbeauty, if only I knew what I know now.
I guess its a distance thing, living in Australia, I am less concerned by many reviews as some stuff just isn't available here, or even if it is if might be in Melbourne (1000km away from Sydney).So the attitude of the magazine becomes more important than the reviews, especially in a global financial downturn when we might want to listen to our music than buy more equipment.
However, I have noticed over the last year, a number of reviews in Stereophile for small $1-2K monitors, precisely what I am looking for to replace the blown speakers. Each time I have been able to borrow them from my dealer and have found that the reviewers comments echo very closely my own impressions. So this has been helpful for this average audiophile. Perhaps a series on delightful inexpensive preamp headphone amps would be useful.
I am not so certain about the utility of group shoot out testing that the british mags like. It sort of dumbs it down - what hifi is the worst for this. However I need some comparisons in a review. Australian Hi Fi is completely aggravating in that it never compares one product to another, while Stereophile gets the balance pretty right by including a comment about one product with reference to another. Its harder to get TAS here so I can't really comment.
Talking of little known but well respected: There is an Australian and New Zealand Hi Fi industry, and some companies make some great stuff but other than the high end (Halcro, Plinius) you never hear of any of it, except on audiogon (or Australian HiFi where the reviews are unsurprisingly really really positive).