On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 06:27:51 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Under JGH, the magazine's view was primarily that reproduced sound should
sound like live sound, and it was the magazine's role to determine which
equipment most closely achieved this goal.

Under JA, the magazine gradually moved in the direction of "if it sounds
good, it is good". Any pretense to honoring the original meaning of "high
fidelity" has been lost. Stereophile has no "objective" standards; it
exists
primarily to justify whatever purchase a particular reader wishes to
make.

Compare music now and music then and you'll understand why "comparing
recorded music to live music" is too narrow a definition of what
hi-fidelity is and why the magazine might have expanded its definition
of the utility of a piece of equipment.

It's not "too-narrow" a definition -- it's the only _valid_ definition.

So you say. But I disagree. With you AND Harry Pearson.

If I were running an audiophile magazine, I would categorically bar reviews
of non-acoustic music, and reviewers would not be allowed to use such music
in judging equipment. But that wouldn't sell very many magazines.

And it wouldn't be a very useful magazine either.

Please remember that there's not a system on the planet that can sound
exactly like a live performance. All systems are a series of
compromises and there's no system or component that offers an absolute
reference vis a vis live or "acoustic" music. Different components and
systems have strengths and weaknesses that can also be judged by
"non-acoustic" music, especially since there's precious little music
that hasn't been processed electronically in one way or another (and
I'm not *just* talking about the physical act of recording either,
which imposes its own "signature").