"George M. Middius" wrote:

William Sommerwerck said:

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.

You might think it odd, but that's exactly how Normal people make their
choices.

On bad pretexts.

If you value "realistic" sound, do you need some reviewer to
tell you whether a system delivers it? That judgment is as subjective as
"too much bass" or "great imaging".

Once you've heard *real* studio quality monitoring and 'heard the light' that
argument is revealed as the fallacy it is.

For as long as I can remember consumer 'hi-fi' tended to falsely accentuate bass
to make it sound more prominent. That was *popular*. It was / is also vastly
inaccurate reproduction.

Graham