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May 30, 2007 - 12:15pm
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Recommended article in Stereophile
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The Absolute Sound did this not long ago and it was indeed fun.
I would set the initial price point lower, perhaps as low as $750.00. There are some amazing budget components out there.
I suggest this as there are a lot of people that can hear better sound, but can't see spending even $1,000.00 on a system. If we can get them hooked through an affordable system we may see additional enthusiasts enter the fold.
Except that the TAS writers did not actually audition the systems they recommended. If Stereophile did such an article, the systems would have to be auditioned, which drastically increases the time required to put the feature together. I would rather my writers spent that time working on conventional reviews.
But I am sure that at some time in the future, we will indeed put together a "Recommended Systems" feature.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
I have no doubt that you're correct, John, but I'm surprized that TAS didn't audition those systems. I browsed those recommendations and didn't infer from what I read that there had been no auditions. Did they just combine components which had been reviewed individually?
From what I could gather, TAS simply recommended systems at various price points that consisted of components that they had reviewed during the previous year or so. In other words, they didn't actually listen to these systems, they just filled in the blanks from the listed prices of the components.
I thought it was a pretty lame attempt at an idea that I advocated Stereophile doing when I first joined the Forums. Any idiot could do what TAS did by going through the Recommended Components section and crunching the numbers to fit the system costs.
TAS may or may not have put much thought into probable system synergy, but I thought it was more pandering than useful.
Perhaps a better way to do it would be to approach several manufacturers in an effort to see if they might loan gear or attempt to assemble systems at given price points for an open ended and perhaps lengthy duration as "reference systems" where components submitted for review could end up replacing a component in the reference system should it prove worthy of inclusion and fit the target price.
This would be an ongoing project that I think makes a lot of sense for everyone involved. I wouldn't let logistics or natural evolutionary changes to the process preclude you guys from taking this sort of thing on. The dislaimer might have to look something like the one in Recommended Components, but if the manufacturers have any sense at all, they would welcome the competitive challenge and the chance to participate.
Just thinking to myself here, but maybe several of the Stereophile reviewers could each be assigned one of the system price points to maintain over time and be responsible for its evolution over time. If they get a component to review during the course of time that displaces one of the existing components then the new system becomes the reference for that budget.
This is a worthwhile and useful idea that deserves better than TAS's lame attempt. Borrowing from one of WP's lines, as an audio magazine, TAS takes really nice pictures.
That's what I had been told by an ex-TAS writer and what I had already decided, based on my reading of the article.
That's a good idea. Stephen Mejias and I had also tossed around the idea of getting dealers to put together systems they knew worked well, which we would then review. But like all good ideas that are not urgent, it is still in development-land.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
If this is the case, and apparently it is, this was a huge waste of time and pages.
I like the idea of it being done, but done right.
What a great idea!! I, of course, especially like the idea of a budget system, maybe even $750?! Maybe spread it out over several issues, and several writers taking different systems. But, what do I know about putting together a magazine? However the details work out, I'm sure it will be top notch! John, thanks for taking the time to read & post here & for considering ideas posted here. I know you must be a very busy man! Larry
P.S. to whomever it may concern, is it possible to put a spell check option here? Someone like me who's not too smart would sure be happy if you did! Thanks!
Well, you could write your piece, copy and paste it in your email program or word processor and correct the spelling, then move it back. Or, you could just say screw it and be who you is.
Dup's word processor just returns "huh?" as its response.
I find wurd processor writings to be just that, they have the processed look and feel. I prefer the more natural effect of "live type". Unprocessed, more natural, without the word processor HAZE that would take away it's nuetrality and liveness of teh typed wurd.
I would appreciate the misspellings of Carl Engebretsen be corrected. The written word has never been so maligned.
A browser like Firefox has a spell check feature built in. It will underline words in red that are spelled incorrectly. Of course, it's up to you to make the fixes or adjust for misspellings due to context.
I was trying to figure out why everyone else didn't have the same functionality that I had, but I thought that it was possible that some of them didn't notice that it was built in?
I'm using Firefox myself and the spell checker comes in very handy.