Stereophile's Recommended Components debate

"...some commentators have complained that almost all of the products reviewed by Stereophile find their way into "Recommended Components." "If everything is recommended," they grump, "what's the point of publishing the list? Or even reviews?"

"Given that we can only scratch the surface of the universe of products offered audiophiles, the goal of our reviews is not to try to review a representative selection of all the audio components that exist (footnote 2). Instead, we do our best to preselect components for coverage that have the best chance of performing well. (Once the review process is underway, however, a full description of a product's performance is published, warts and all.) If we do that job well, not only will everything we review eventually appear in "Recommended Components," but the listing will be skewed toward the higher grades, which it is."

These extracts are from John Atkinson "As We see It" in October 2004 Stereophile. If you are puzzled by number of recommended components, then I recommend that you read this particular this Stereophile article, available in their Web site.