pentode wrote:

Over the years, it seems that some Stereophile Magazine authors have lowered their written communications to more closely match the USA's voting public.

Not that I am aware of. Stereophile's copy editor for almost every issue since July 1984 has been the same person, Richard Lehnert, and he has been consistent in our usage all this time.

pentode wrote:

I regularly read: "value-for-the-money" What is value, if not for the money? Why the need to explain "for the money." What's a good value, otherwise?

Yes, there are many examples of this usage. We tend to use "for money" after "value" as it is often not 100% certain when something is described as a "value" or a "value proposition" or "has value" or similar phrase. What precisely is valued: its quality, regardless of price, or its quality for the price?

pentode wrote:

"At this point in time" Either point or time should be eliminated. The same for: "In any way, shape or form." Cliche, trite, worn, and redundant.

Puzzled by this one as a search for the phrase "this point in time" in our archived content found just 4 examples: Art Dudley’s "Listening" in May 2007, David Wilson in my 1990 interview with him, Elizabeth Cohen in her 1995 Jerry Garcia obit, and Michael Fremer in his 1997 Immedia tonearm review, as well as an example from Barry Willis in a 2004 on-line news item. There are many examples in comments posted by readers, but we don't copy edit such comments. Overall, this hardly seems to be an issue worth complaining about, I would have thought.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Value "for the money" means a modern AVR that costs a thousand dollars and has sound quality 90% as good as a ten thousand dollar high-end power amplifier.
Value "regardless of price" means the ten thousand dollar power amplifier.

Quote:

Value "regardless of price" means the ten thousand dollar power amplifier.

Or, perhaps, the ten thousand dollar power amplifier might be described as value despite the price. ;-)