RickH wrote:
wrote:
IMO, Stereophile crossed the "beyond worthless" threshold
quite some
time ago. It is now simply an advertising vehicle for the
manufacturers. Period.


IMO, most "electronic related" magazines are not what they
used to be
pre 1980. They are all dumbed down for observers and not
doers, and
foster a culture of end-users as opposed to true amateurs
(lovers of
the hobby). I think it stems from the fact that the
American male,
(with the exception of folks on groups like this), are no
longer
do-it-yourselfers.

No do-it-yourselfers? What about Home Depot, etc?

No audio do-it-yourselfers?

That's a bit more comples to explain.

By the time I was 7 I already knew how to square a
board, solder a wire, drill a hole, dismantle a 5 tube
radio, etc.

But, you didn't know how to dismantle a computer, because
there probably were no computers in your house to dismantle.

Modern kids are probably operating at the same level of
complexity that you did, but that complexity takes many
different forms.

Today boys grow up playing and watching video and not
building or
dismantleing equipment.

There have been more than a few paradigm shifts.

They get no feel for how things work, they just see the
output.

Just understanding the output can be a technical task.

I remember when every issue of Popular Science
had an electronic project to build,

Actually several projects, maybe 1-2 major ones, 2-3 minor
ones and then a bunch of trivial ones.

and when hi-fi magazines regularly had speaker projects,
or pre-amp projects, or whatever.

Home construction of audio gear started out with practical,
mostly economic justifications. Low-cost overseas production
of finished products elimianted quite a bit of that. OTOH,
there's more complexity to hooking up the speakers in a 5.1
system then there was to building a 3-way speaker from my
boyhood days.

Stereophile is a classic case of this dumbing down
effect, a magazine run by
marketers for folks with lots of money who couldnt fix a
lamp cord
and regularly cross-thread their toothpaste caps.

So much for them.

You know a good
magazine by how long it takes you to read it, when my
Stereophile
arrives I'm usually done with it in 7 minutes, same old
dribble over
and over.

Blame that on authors like Fremer.

When my copy of Circuit Cellar arrives I'm with it all
month because of it's depth.

Fun!

When I did'nt renew my last Stereophile
subscription they just extended it for free, they must be
desparate
to keep their subsription numbers up.

Intersting.