Difference between Stereophile and Ultimate A/V Magazine? (1 Viewer)

Just a quick question. What is the difference between Stereophile Magazine, and their also-owned Ultimate A/V Magazine? Is the latter for less-expensive products? Is one more trustworthy than the other?

Stereophile is more for two channel audio. SUAV is more for home theater. Stereophile does more measurements, but personally, I find the reviews in SUAV more "believable." I get both, but if I had to choose, I'd choose to keep SUAV.

Ahh, thanks for that input, Kevin. So would it also be safe to say that Stereophile reviews pricier products, since 2-channel is generally (and the term generally being thrown very loosely) a more purist format?

Not necessarily pricier (some of the systems reviewed in Ultimate AV would break many CEOs accounts) but probably a higher concentration of more expensive gear in Stereophile. From my somewhat limited reading of the respective magazines and their websites.

Stereophile reviewed monoblock amplifiers by some manufacturer a while back that listed for $300,000 or something. I'd agree with Paul, a higher percentage of gear reviewed by Stereophile is priced "stratospherically".

$300 grand? Those could only have been the Wavacs.

Stereophile also has a lot more hocus pocus products and snobby attitudes from my experience. If you don't own a multi-thousand dollar record player (yes, vinyl), then don't bother reading the magazine. I don't remember a single product that I wanted to buy after my subscription ran out, other than possibly a CD or two. The condescension throughout each page was hard to digest. Ultimate AV (and the previous Guide to Home Theater) on the other hand, I savor every page and their fantastic selection of components that they review each month.

You've pretty much gotten the picture here. Those high-end, audio-only magazines are, well, worthless.

I get both and I agree with Kevin Brown, if I could only get one it would be SUAV.

I think the $300K+ amps were Halcro.

Actually, I would insert a small objection to your observation. I have read both The Absolute Sound and Stereophile and found much to dismiss in each of them. However, Stereophile does perform measurements of the gear it tests (which I think is nice to have) and both magazines, via their music reviews, particularly Kal Rubenstein's Music in the Round column (on m/c audio), have led me to discover some rather nice discs of which I would otherwise have remained ignorant. Moreover, I've found some of the turgid prose employed by some of their equipment reviewers useful as examples of how not to write about technical matters in the technical writing seminars I occasionally give at a local engineering consultancy firm. So they are not entirely worthless.

I don't agree. For $12 bucks a year, I think they are worth the $$.

Dean, I'm pretty sure the $300K amps were Wavac. I don't think Halcro makes amps THAT expensive, as pricey as they are, granted.

Paul, I recently bought and read my first Absolute Sound and Stereophile magazines a couple months back (still trying to decide whether or not to subscribe), and I found Absolute Sound to not only be exponentially more pretentious, but their writers were not as "conversational" in their writing. In other words, it wasn't so much they were speaking TO me, as they were LECTURING me.

But I do appreciate their objectivity, compared to other industry magazines. In the September issue of TAS, they reviewed the new $6000 M1 turntable from Musical Fidelity, and from what I gathered, it did not fare all that favorable.

6K table is for the poor.No wonder they didn't like it.
I agree with Paul's assesment here I consider Kalman Rubisnson their best writer[Stereophile]and the fact that John Atkinson measures everything and he tells it like it is if something is wrong there.

Yes, but JA is also a big part of the problem.

Granted, he can't escape his own shadow.