Originally Posted by wavoman  Cykler, I'm not sure you have this right. And your final line is a tad insulting (to me, anyway). I say that with respect and friendship, since I enjoy your posts, including a brilliant one re this very magazine (Stereophile) a while back (wooden v metal knobs …).
So let me walk you through my thoughts if I may … perhaps when you finish reading this you will agree that your barb is not totally justified (but perhaps not ... still, my philosophy is always to aim for common ground).
For starters, what you claim is “obvious” is just not so -- I read the entire column thoroughly and completely (all of Page 3, very dense) as soon as I got the magazine. On my own, I thought of the idea you raised – that the HP manufacturers omitted did not respond – and considered it carefully before I made my original post.
But here’s the thing: John Atkinson wrote:
“You’ll find listed every audio component currently available in the US … We have headphones …”
He did not say anything like “except when the manufacturer did not answer us”. And then, when he explained the procedures they used to gather information, he wrote:
“Debbie and Claire did a second round of e-mailing to manufacturers that had not yet responded to the first …finally Stephen Mejias fact-checked all the spreadsheets … Stephen then proofed each page and contacted, one last time, those companies still not represented … Despite everyone’s efforts, I’m sure there are still some audio brands that should have been included but unfortunately have not been”
This would be the perfect place to insert a disclaimer – “if the manufacturer did not respond then they were dropped from the listings” but he does not say that. Rather, you get the impression that only smaller companies not in their database, companies they did not even know about, were omitted.
In other words, I have reached the opposite conclusion from you. The remark about “fact checking”, coupled with Atkinson’s first statement “every audio component”, leads me to believe they should have contacted and included AKG no matter what – after all, they named the AKG 701 their reference headphone (before the HD800 days)!
Similarly, did they really go out of their way to contact beyer-usa? Those guys are very responsive. My guess is that maybe they sent an email or two to Austria (AKG) and Germany (beyer) but that nobody at Stereophile really cares enough about headphones to work hard enough (which is not very hard, just use Google) to include these major manufacturers.
I do not believe they would not have omitted a major manufacturer from the other sections – they would be embarrassed. They should be embarrassed to omit AKG and beyer – two very, very famous audio companies for more than just headphones – from their directory.
I will email John Atkinson, and let you know what he says. I will copy Alan at beyer-usa, a man always on top of his emails ... we'll see what Alan says too.
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