A rare review or a rare misstep?
- Thread starter DaveyF
- Start date
Only recently have Polk products had any real high-end aspirations despite their advertising claims to the contrary. Yet I don't know of any high-end dealer that stocks Polk? Perhaps others do.
That algorithm musta really changed
The sound of his early products don't bear any resemblance to his newest gear.
That algorithm musta really changed
Dunno about the latest line stage and SET amp, cause i haven't heard them. I thought the ML2 (original version, which is the one I have) was and is still very musical, but as to the rest, what's the nature of the change? (I know the all tube line stage was more romantic than the hybrid one I am using and never listened to his big hybrid amps)....
PS you can PM me, if you don't want to derail the thread, I'm just curious about your comment Myles....
All true..but Stereophile has raved about several Polk speakers..even in the Sept. 2012 issue...
You are correct...with a rave about their most recent book shelf speaker in the Sept Stereophile.
hi
Why is it that a manufacturer can't make a step back in the honest opinion of a reviewer? Besides, are the manufacturers infallible? Don't they, like anybody on this planet make mistakes? Come on people!!
Another thing is the tendency to take jabs at mid-fi manufacturers, this is unfair. When they concentrate on our market they are perfectly capable of producing great products that would outshine and outperform many purely High End endeavors. Remember they have the muscles and often their R&D budget surpass likely any High End companies yearly revenues .. Let's take the example of Pioneer: mass market and Sony: even more mass Market .. Well Pioneer produces TAD , actually TAD is entirely owned by Pioneer .. Does anyone take TAD as second grade not High End? Really??? TAD??? Meanwhile it seems that SONY has produced some currently available serious and high Performance Speakers and so has the normal Pioneer and I would not dismiss the High End Efforts of companies like Denon ... There are several other examples.. As for Polk , have not heard anything from them for a long time and last I heard one .. The least said ...
End of OT
Why is it that a manufacturer can't make a step back in the honest opinion of a reviewer? Besides, are the manufacturers infallible? Don't they, like anybody on this planet make mistakes? Come on people!!
Another thing is the tendency to take jabs at mid-fi manufacturers, this is unfair. When they concentrate on our market they are perfectly capable of producing great products that would outshine and outperform many purely High End endeavors. Remember they have the muscles and often their R&D budget surpass likely any High End companies yearly revenues .. Let's take the example of Pioneer: mass market and Sony: even more mass Market .. Well Pioneer produces TAD , actually TAD is entirely owned by Pioneer .. Does anyone take TAD as second grade not High End? Really??? TAD??? Meanwhile it seems that SONY has produced some currently available serious and high Performance Speakers and so has the normal Pioneer and I would not dismiss the High End Efforts of companies like Denon ... There are several other examples.. As for Polk , have not heard anything from them for a long time and last I heard one .. The least said ...
End of OT
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hi
Why is it that a manufacturer can't make a step back in the honest opinion of a reviewer? Besides, are the manufacturers infallible? Don't they, like anybody on this planet make mistakes? Come on people!!
Another thing is the tendency to take jabs and mid-fi manufacturers and this is unfair. If they concentrate on our market they are perfectly capable of producing great products that will outshine and outperform many purely High End endeavors. Remember they have the muscles and often their R&D budget surpass likely any High End companies yearly revenues .. Le;s take the example of Pioneer, mass market and Sony even more mass Market .. Well Pioneer produces TAD , actually TAD is Pioneer .. Does anyone take TAD as second grade not High End? Really??? TAD??? Meanwhile it seems that SONY has produced some currently available serious and high Performance Speakers and so has the normal Pioneer and I would not dismiss the High End Efforts of companies like Denon ... There are several other examples.. As for Polk , have not heard anything from them for a long time and last I heard one .. The least said ...
End of OT
Excellent points.
As I noted before, it certainly IS possible for the exalted companies in our hobby to screw up..no doubt. However I guess the reason there are doubts about this review
is the source...TAS has had a credibility issue lately and they get taken to task..sometime unfairly. Alan Taffel is a good writer, and knows his stuff..but some of his
reviews can be rather odd. Not all, just some.
Anyway, my personal experience with ARC is that the products coming out of the factory over the past few years have been stellar. I have NOT heard the DAC 8 but I did
hear the CD player, and it was excellent.
I will have to make it a point to hear the DAC8 soon if a local dealer has one.
Now as far as attacking "MidFi", (a rather unfortunate term) I agree. There are some SUPERB products from Paradigm, Parasound,AudioLab Denon, NAD, Marantz (non Reference Series),
Boston Acoustics, etc etc etc that would surprise many here.
I think Andre is right on the mark here with his comments. Who says Alan got it right in his TAS review?? So he didn’t like the DAC8 - big deal. Is that grounds to assume Alan is right when two other reviews of the DAC 8 were rather glowing and one of the reviewers bought the DAC 8? Is that grounds to accuse ARC of not even listening to the DAC 8 before they released it to the public because a TAS reviewer didn’t like it? Talk about a leap of faith…
Frankly, I’m amazed at some of the comments and the conclusions that have been jumped to here. Alan is being held up like he is the beacon of honesty and hope for reviewers with integrity. Alan is assumed to be correct and ARC is accused of releasing a product without even listening to it first. I find this to be a false adoration of a reviewer and a lynching of ARC at the same time by someone who doesn’t know if Alan is ‘right’ and nor has he one iota of proof that ARC would have released the DAC 8 without ever listening to it first. To compound the delusion, the person who made these remarks admits he has never heard the DAC 8 and therefore has no idea how it sounds. This would have all made more sense if the person in question had heard the DAC 8 in their system and agreed with the TAS review. But that is simply not the case.
And somehow I’m the bad guy because I asked the question that begged to be asked: Do you really think that ARC would release a product to the marketplace without listening to it first? And my question was deleted from the thread. Wow. Over and out.
Out of curiosity, i bought a download of the issue and read the review. The reviewer's criticisms of the unit don't seem to fall into the subjective 'didn't like the flavor of the sound' camp; he seemed very focused on the 'noise floor,' for lack of a better word, and the inability of the newer unit to discern musical nuances that were apparent using the predecessor unit.
Equally puzzling, the unit apparently was not defective. (Yes, I know, in the dark old days, a potentially bad review could lead the manufacturer to claim that they were already in the process of the update to correct the problem).
I have no dog in this fire, to mix a metaphor. I respect ARC, and have owned their equipment (mostly a long time ago); I also don't know enough about the reviewer or how he evaluated the piece to know what to make of this. I suppose this might be an invitation for the 'objectivists' to weigh in, and point out the failings of subjective reviews. I honestly don't know what to make of this.
I do still read the magazines, not as avidly as I once did- and there was always a way of reading between the lines (someone else in this thread already brought that out- a piece of equipment can be panned by mild praise, rather than outright negatives). But, I gather this is unusual- not many negative reviews these days in general?
Equally puzzling, the unit apparently was not defective. (Yes, I know, in the dark old days, a potentially bad review could lead the manufacturer to claim that they were already in the process of the update to correct the problem).
I have no dog in this fire, to mix a metaphor. I respect ARC, and have owned their equipment (mostly a long time ago); I also don't know enough about the reviewer or how he evaluated the piece to know what to make of this. I suppose this might be an invitation for the 'objectivists' to weigh in, and point out the failings of subjective reviews. I honestly don't know what to make of this.
I do still read the magazines, not as avidly as I once did- and there was always a way of reading between the lines (someone else in this thread already brought that out- a piece of equipment can be panned by mild praise, rather than outright negatives). But, I gather this is unusual- not many negative reviews these days in general?
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mep, I don't think it is possible to sum up a reasonable counterpoint to the OP any better than you just did.
Spot on.
One thing that also was not brought up is...do we take this as an outright pan...or is this reviewer saying he PREFERS the DAC7 to the DAC8?
I still have not gotten my issue. I think the last issue I received was in June.
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I'm with you on this one. I too have no dog in this fire.( I actually like and respect the ARC products) However, I am a little amused as to why people seem to think that because it is a well-known and respected company like ARC getting a bad review ( please don't state an opinion on the review until you have read it) that the reviewer has erred somehow. He may have BUT he may NOT have. What's more interesting to me is that this is the first negative review that i have seen of any piece in the last few years in any of the a'phile publications. ( please don't tell me that of all the gear gushingly reviewed over the years, that there haven't been a few real turkeys)
To me it's like a breath of fresh air....unless of course you want the status quo, wherein all gear reviewed is good to great and a true discriminatory aspect is not to be considered.
Once again, I'm NOT defending Alan Taffel or his review, just saying that IF he is correct ( and I have no reason to believe that he is not, at least in his mind)) then I appreciate his honesty in reviewing.
I don't think the point of this thread relates to ARC at all. It could've been any other company. The point being made here is that a major audiophile publication published a somewhat bad review of a product.
Isn't that just what people always ask in the "Letters" section? "Why isn't there more negative reviews?", "at least some of those products must be crap!", etc. Well, now they did find one that's sub-par (at least compared to a previous generation of the same product), and they publish it, accusations fly?
Let them be. Reviews must always be taken at face value, be them positive or negative.
Isn't that just what people always ask in the "Letters" section? "Why isn't there more negative reviews?", "at least some of those products must be crap!", etc. Well, now they did find one that's sub-par (at least compared to a previous generation of the same product), and they publish it, accusations fly?
Let them be. Reviews must always be taken at face value, be them positive or negative.
I'm with you on this one. I too have no dog in this fire.( I actually like and respect the ARC products) However, I am a little amused as to why people seem to think that because it is a well-known and respected company like ARC getting a bad review ( please don't state an opinion on the review until you have read it) that the reviewer has erred somehow. He may have BUT he may NOT have. What's more interesting to me is that this is the first negative review that i have seen of any piece in the last few years in any of the a'phile publications. ( please don't tell me that of all the gear gushingly reviewed over the years, that there haven't been a few real turkeys)
To me it's like a breath of fresh air....unless of course you want the status quo, wherein all gear reviewed is good to great and a true discriminatory aspect is not to be considered.
Once again, I'm NOT defending Alan Taffel or his review, just saying that IF he is correct ( and I have no reason to believe that he is not, at least in his mind)) then I appreciate his honesty in reviewing.
Good clarification.
One thing that would be helpful to all readers/hobbyists is if TAS actually had a functional website, where one could search out archived Taffel
reviews to get some context for his preferences. It is sad that in 2012 one can still not do this. Every single Sphile review is archived and can be
searched out by author, brand, model, etc.
I do have on question..why do you think this is the "first negative review in the last few years" in the mags? There have been quite a few. Fremer hated
the Bryston amplification, Harley was very cool about the Venture Grand Ultimates, Lichte absolutely skewered Totem, and quite a few others.
Remember, there are very veiled ways that reviewers toe the line when giving a negative reviews. They use phrases like "careful system matching required",
that xyz "may not appeal to everyone", or "the XYX faces stiff competition at this price point".
Lastly, understand how reviews are arranged. Most are for products the reviewer will have heard at show and came away with positive
impressions. Many are products from manufacturers that the reviewer has an excellent relationship with. How many Musical Fidelity reviews
has Sam Tellig done? How many ARC products has Valin done? How many Audio Note products has Art Dudley done? That is just the way it is.
Lastly, reviewers may also get approached cold by manufacturers, or they may get assigned a product to review by the editor.