That I think is definitely a big issue, all too often we have reviews where the gear sounds great but measures like shit, or it measures decently and sounds like crap. There's a few rare components that both measure well and sound great. And that's about where it ends. Nobody outside of the DIY forums really looks at the whys behind it all to try and put together some of the pieces to the puzzles, the audio mags along with most of the online 'zines pretty much shrug it off and go "guess that's just the way it is". That is, if they don't go hardline with yet another subjectivist vs. objectivist strawman shitfest.
I find that sad since the general public never gets to learn anything. The mags gush on about the gear and they don't bother educating the readers on anything, UHF is the one exception since they do have a tech theory article in each issue. Using the car mag analogy, when GM, Honda, or Lotus comes out with some new engine tech, suspension design, or other new tech gadget, the car mags will usually have a column to explain what it is, what it does, and why it's good. Stuff like VANOS, Bluetec diesel, suspension linkage design, Miller cycle engines, CVT's and so forth all gets explained. Read a dozen or so issues of most car mags and you'll know most of this stuff.
Contrast that with audio mags, I could read the last 5 years of Stereophile & TAS and still not know the difference between a MOSFET, JFET, and a Bipolar transistor. I won't know what a Williamson or Dynaco circuit is, or what a Long Tailed Pair, Cathodyne, or Schmidt phase-splitter is and the advantages & disadvantages of each. I won't know why the slope of a crossover in a speaker is important, I'll know that 1st order crossovers are phase coherent and that's as far as it goes. I won't know the difference between R2R DAC chips and delta-sigma DACs, which is about as important of a difference as the one between gasoline & diesel engines as far as designing DAC circuitry is concerned. Nowhere do they explain anything about power supplies except to say "big transformers, big caps, Blackgates!", the reader is left to guess at what the fuck it all means.
It's almost as if the audio mags are deliberately trying to keep their readers stupid. Cause god forbid if your readers grew brains, they might figure out that something like say, the cRaptor is a flaming turd and a safety hazard to boot. And that would tend to give them second thoughts despite your gushing reviewer praise.
I feel that the audio mags have a duty to educate the readers so that they can make informed decisions. There should be tech articles, explaining for instance the pros & cons of soft dome vs. metal dome tweeters or the tech behind SE vs. P-P tube amps and speaker cabinet designs. UHF does have basic tech articles, they did one a little while back on power supplies and they're now running a series on room acoustics. AudioXpress which is mostly a DIY mag will of course get into all the nice calculations and talk about the theory & design issues, hell, they even broke out some calculus in one of their issues. You don't need to go that in-depth, but I'd like to see the mainstream audio mags cover some of that stuff on a fundamental level.
