If you remember the specs race, you probably remember all of the unbiased (no pun intended) reviews in Stereo Review and Audio magazine. Or not, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY!
I went to a local dealer to hear Len Feldman speak and after the Q&A, we ended up on the elevator with him. He had said that most amplifiers sound the same and we told him he was wrong, in no uncertain terms. I probably wouldn't go about it in the same way now, but I still disagree.
Public address and background music systems are designed using specs unless past experience told the designer that some item is far worse than another. Serious listening isn't happening, so the ultimate sound quality isn't as important as reliability. Concert sound is different, yet very similar. Nothing like under-spec'ing a system (or, all of the equipment for multiple stages) and finding out the hard way that it was inadequate. In Milwaukee, we have a ten day event called 'Summerfest' and one year, someone decided to use a different sound company, which decided that Bose Professional amps and speakers would work- must have thought the big speakers looked too industrial/menacing, or something. They were wrong. Imagine Pat Metheny playing and the amplifiers randomly cutting out/in and there was nothing Metheny could do about it. The next year and every year since, the original sound company has provided the equipment and staff to operate everything, with few problems. Sound quality is generally pretty good, too.
I pretty much ignored Stereo Review completely, subscribed to Audio, dB, The Absolute Sound (no-ad version). All three are gone now (unless you count the modern TAS, which I am not fond of). These days it's Stereophile, TapeOps (online), Sound on Sound, and a host of online sites (I don't really spend much time with the reviews here at Audioholics, they are informative but I don't get enough sense as to the sonics from them, sorry Gene).
The key to reviews is, one, to get to know the reviewer, so you can tell if he likes gear and dislikes gear that you have heard and agree generally with, and to resist the urge to buy into the latest gear, which will be talked up because it's the nature of reviewing, but realize what you own may be just fine.
The way most people use them ... to read up on something they can afford and are considering, but without paying any attention or investing the time to the reviewer, and followed by a no-audition purchase is, in my opinion, misguided and is likely to lead to dis-satification.
Even when someone asks for opinions in a forum like this one, without searching the username of the poster whose advice you choose to accept, falls into that category. I have no idea, for example putting you, highfigh, on the spot, so to speak, what you like and dislike versus my own preferences, and I would have to search your post history to learn that. It takes an investment in time, no way around it.
Like it or not, satisfactory home audio is composed of
systems, not individual components. Things have to work together, not fight each other, for an enjoyable, truly High End system (which is not, by the way, based on cost, save for getting past the products that cut too many corners out of necessity).
When you can buy a PS Audio Sprout and ELAC speakers, complete with Emotiva cables right from PS Audio online* and have enough change left for a turntable and cartridge for about $1000, done, excellent sound, maybe you have to DIY some stands and a rack of some sort, you can't say High End is expensive. It is not about the money, it's about the end result, and I've heard countless high dollar setups that fail and fail catastrophically.
Nobody said this hobby was easy. But it doesn't have to be hard either.
* Just one example.
