So I was bored again and got to thinking about reviews and gear.... anyway, to cut a long story short.....

What's your favourite Audio Brand & Magazine?

Your favourite brand can be based on pretty much anything... sound quality, aesthetics, research, enviromental policies, whatever....

And the magazine (assuming you read them).... well, any reason you like.... even Playboy counts... lol (hey from what I remember they reviewed tech/gadgets as well)...


My fav brand:

Musical Fidelity - Partially because I like the sound of their products.... but mainly because of their R&D practices... I'm really happy to see an audio company break away from the standard 5 year product lifecycle, and introduce new products to the market regularly... I think part of what has made high-end audio less exciting and less afordable than it could be, is the fact that products have such long shelf lives... Every year bigger, better and cheaper tvs comes out... but audio lags behind.... ever so slowly getting better and more affordable....

My fav Mag

Well I had to chose between the good old brittish What Hifi? which I like for the number of reviews of products across all price ranges and group tests...

&

Stereophile - in the end I chose Stereophile.... yeah I know there are numerous valid criticisms of this mag... some of the most obvious being 1) They pretty much never bash any products & 2) They review too many exotic and totally unaffordable gear to be of much use to the majority of the buying public....

but despite those hangups I do love two things about their mag 1) The Measurements done after the subjective review - its great too see whether a 150 watt amp really generates 150 watts... & 2) They have the audacity to compare really expensive with relatively affordable gear... just check out their 'recommended products' issue and you see $1K CD players rated at class A, along with $5K ones... and $1.5K speakers rated at Class B alongside $7K ones... one of the best examples was a review of the Revel Concerta F12s..... the reviewer actually used those $1.5K speakers in a setup designed for his reference gear of Revel Studios and B&W 802D..... and was willing to admit that the differences were only dramatic untill he closed his eyes and listened to the music... That takes guts and humility to admit that gear costing 1 tenth of the price of your own is not that far off in quality...

Anyway,

What's your favourite Audio Brand & Magazine? And why?