"Long-Term Equipment Loans: A Win-Win for Everyone" by Robert Harley, The Absolute Sound

[Richard Austen]

Long term review equipment is a gift to the reviewer, to the magazine, and to the equipment company. The magazine gives accolades to the equipment manufacturer everytime they mention it’s their reference gear or it’s part of the gear they used to review a product.

IMO, every review from any audio magazine is worthless. For 1, when have you seen a negative review? Never!
When have you seen any reviewer in a mag compare 2 or 3 like products and have them rated 1st, 2nd, 3rd? Car mags do this $300,000 to $1M cars all the time.
Also, every review contains what the manufacturer wants them to say to introduce their gear and mod always, the reviewer gets so excited by a new acronym that means the same thing that has been going on for 10-20 years, but they think it’s new.
I get a couple of the audio mags to see what is coming out, but I trust some of the online reviewers and the smaller reviewers.

I enjoy a car review YouTube channel called Motomouth and the reviewers review one car a week and answer questions the other time. One person asked them why they don't review Rivian. They didn't like some of their comments so won't sent them more cars.

Review magazines exist only if the manufacturers (or dealers) provide them with gear to review. UHF Magazine out of Canada has been reviewing for over 30 years review with a panel of reviewers listening, they have done blind tests, taken measurements and have given out plenty of negative reviews over the years to major brands like B&W Loudspeakers, Bryston, Arcam, Cambridge Audio, Paradigm loudspeakers, and McIntosh. The engineer on their staff called McIntosh OTL amplifiers a "bad design." Unfortunately, they also struggle to get anyone to send them any products. Manufacturers only want reviews because it's cheap advertising. The manufacturer has a given unit - Trends Audio sent me a little amplifier for review for dagogo and then I sent the unit to UHF Magazine for them to review it. Perhaps they forwarded it on to the next publication. The Audio Note P3 Power amp I reviewed - I gave back and it was sent to another reviewer locally. It's cheaper than taking out advertising in Stereophile.


The long-term loan thing is a little tough to judge because not everyone who is a reviewer has deep pockets. Fred Crowder who reviews at the very top end of the audio market and actually buys those $350k+ items out of his own pocket told me early on that if I want to review the $20k components I need to have units at similar price points.

If I have a $1500 amp and $1500 speakers - a manufacturer doesn't gain anything by sending me his $25,000 amp. What can I say about it - "it sounds much better than my reference" - well no kidding - it should.

So sure a manufacturer with deep pockets can give a reviewer a long-term loan and their product will be mentioned all the time. Musical Fidelity was always on standby at Stereophile - they are on a print deadline and if XYZ amp didn't show up - they had an MF amp as a stand-in. MF was happy to do it - always get reviewed and saved Stereophile by allowing them to always have material for their magazine. The problem is that people would grumble that they had a love affair with MF.

I decided long ago to read reviews and forum advice are more for entertainment value - even forum arguments that go endlessly into minutia are a form of entertainment as people still argue tubes vs SS and horns vs panels and whether cables sound different or which is a better driver material paper or kevlar etc. Pretty much all the same arguments I was reading in 1999.


My advice on reviews is as follows:

1) Find a reviewer who hears it like you do - they have shown that what they like is the kind of stuff you like - maybe they they will order their top three favourite amps differently than you but you both agree that they're the top three.


2) if said person does not exist then take a blanket approach over time. Speakers or amplifiers have sold for over 30 years continuously, and many reviewers have not only covered said products but also purchased the product for themselves.


In the case of numbers 1 and 2, the item is worth bringing home for an audition. This is assuming, you have limited time and can't spend days and days and weeks and weeks listening to everything in your area.

 

[tima]

Honest writers will say that everyone needs a good editor. The best editors apply a scalpel not a sword.

Yes, I agree.

Nowadays any cowboy with a pick-up truck and a decal can be a general contractor and anybody with a domain name and an HTML editor can be an audio reviewer. The number of audio review sites has exploded in the last few years and they can vary widely in protocol and quality.

If an article does not pass through an editor or if the author is the editor I weigh it differently than those that do. Articles should also pass through the manufacturer to check for technical accuracy.

 

[mtemur]

IMO, every review from any audio magazine is worthless. For 1, when have you seen a negative review? Never!

Maybe it’s because they (reviews) are advertisements.

 

[mtemur]

Personally I like the magazines when they have articles on a topic I'm interested in - I have no interest in streaming, I am interested in analogue - but I read them as entertainment not a source of definitive truth about anything. I still have magazines from 20 years ago and enjoy them.

+1

 

[PYP]

Maybe it’s because they (reviews) are advertisements.

It is interesting to compare music reviews to equipment reviews. A magazine like Downbeat provides a way to discuss (market) a musician who has released a new album. This marketing function, however, also typically provides interesting information about the musician and does not prevent some reviewers from giving low(ish) marks to the latest release.

 

[Kingrex]

It is interesting to compare music reviews to equipment reviews. A magazine like Downbeat provides a way to discuss (market) a musician who has released a new album. This marketing function, however, also typically provides interesting information about the musician and does not prevent some reviewers from giving low(ish) marks to the latest release.

Like Taylors latest album.

 

[Tangram]

I’m okay with long-term equipment loans because it’s important reviewers have a high-end reference system, yet most don’t have the funds to buy the gear outright, even with accommodations. I am more annoyed when, say, a reviewer is using another piece of gear that’s in for review (and thus has limited familiarity with it) when writing a review on another piece of gear.

Honestly, nothing should change in the reference system except the piece in for review. That said, I appreciate when reviewers include a discussion on, say, how speakers in for review sound with a number of amps the reviewer is intimately familiar with, a la Herb Reichert.

To besmirch every single reviewer collectively isn’t cool.

 

[Atmasphere]

UHF Magazine out of Canada has been reviewing for over 30 years review with a panel of reviewers listening, they have done blind tests, taken measurements and have given out plenty of negative reviews over the years to major brands like B&W Loudspeakers, Bryston, Arcam, Cambridge Audio, Paradigm loudspeakers, and McIntosh. The engineer on their staff called McIntosh OTL amplifiers a "bad design."

MacIntosh put no time into that design at all!

They never made OTLs

 

[andromedaaudio]

Ok again on topic .

The longer the loan the better the review

 

[andromedaaudio]

I dare to take it even further .
If you keep the gear long enough the manufacturer might forget about it altogether , there is your win right there

 

[PeterA]

I dare to take it even further .
If you keep the gear long enough the manufacturer might forget about it altogether , there is your win right there

Does Valin still have his Walker turntable? He seems to have the longest list of gear per square foot of listening room area of any reviewer out there. He does write well.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Does Valin still have his Walker turntable? He seems to have the longest list of gear per square foot of listening room area of any reviewer out there. He does write well.

Good for him.
I hope he does well .
First rule of investing buy low sell high

 

[Lee]

I agree, but there seems to be a need for closer editing of the reviews. When an experienced writer says something like (paraphrasing): "It has been two years since I heard version 1 of these speakers, but from memory they sound like such and such compared to the latest version," we know that sentence should have been cut because it makes no sense and is misleading unless the reviewer lived with those v1 speakers for a very long time. They had not.

It is also misleading when the new component is elevated by enumerating very exaggerated negative traits of what came before it. For example, at the level of the equipment reviewed by The Absolute Sound, it is hard to believe that previous digital gear sounds flat, discontinuous or two-dimensional. Those qualities were left behind a long time ago.

Honest writers will say that everyone needs a good editor. The best editors apply a scalpel not a sword.

Not only do I agree but I would say I have benefited greatly in my own reviews from editors.

 

[Balle Clorin]

This is why measurements matters.. And that is the only reason I subscribe to only one Hifi magazine, Stereophile . Without measuring you have no way of knowing the quality the product has. Always fun to read a review stating that XYZ is the greatest sounding product ever, when the measurement reveals that it is a mediocre thing in a fancy box.

 

[mtemur]

Without measuring you have no way of knowing the quality the product has.

This statement puzzled me, especially coming from someone who listens to vinyl. While I enjoy reading measurements, I don’t believe they’re the only way to assess a product’s quality. For instance, I’ve spent thousands of hours listening to six or seven different Kondo Ongaku amplifiers in my friends’ setups, as well as my own. In my opinion, it’s one of the best-sounding amplifiers ever made, hands down. Yet, if you measure it, the results are worse than those of a $15 no-name Class D amplifier from China. I don’t think measurements alone can determine a product’s true quality.

 

[PeterA]

This statement puzzled me, especially coming from someone who listens to vinyl. While I enjoy reading measurements, I don’t believe they’re the only way to assess a product’s quality. For instance, I’ve spent thousands of hours listening to six or seven different Kondo Ongaku amplifiers in my friends’ setups, as well as my own. In my opinion, it’s one of the best-sounding amplifiers ever made, hands down. Yet, if you measure it, the results are worse than those of a $15 no-name Class D amplifier from China. I don’t think measurements alone can determine a product’s true quality.

Maybe the measurements of the Ongaku amplifiers are actually better than those of the Chinese Class D amp because they describe the quality and quantity of distortion that contribute the the amplifier’s sound characteristics that sound more natural or realistic to you.

The question I think the designer should ask is what are the important measurements and what should they look like for better sound?

I tend to think that measurements are best used by the designer and not the end user, and that listening should be utilized by both the designer and the end user to judge quality and success.

 

[mtemur]

Maybe the measurements of the Ongaku amplifiers are actually better than those of the Chinese Class D amp because they describe the quality and quantity of distortion that contribute the the amplifier’s sound characteristics that sound more natural or realistic to you.

The question I think the designer should ask is what are the important measurements and what should they look like for better sound?

I tend to think that measurements are best used by the designer and not the end user, and that listening should be utilized by both the designer and the end user to judge quality and success.

I don’t understand. Are you saying measurements Class D amps sound better than SETs since Ongaku doesn’t measure different than a regular SET?

 

[Balle Clorin]

@mtemur .. allow me to explain..
Yes, I am into vinyl that has significant distortion , and I used tube amps including powerful mono blocks and 300b SET for 15 years (before coming back to transistor class A 5 years ago), and I still have tube RIAA and preamp I built. Distortion up to a level does not sound bad, it add colour and timbre.

My 300b sounded lovely even at 2% distortion, but had very good transformers with low distortion in the bass and good enough damping ( 1 ohm output resistance) . I managed to optimize and improve the performance by tube choice + measurements.


I have listened and measured these things and are fully aware that %THD is just a number, so what I look for in the measurements is the “Relative performance “ according to the object, that means the same criteria cannot be used for a 300b amp as for a DAC or SS amp. Still it is easy to see from measurements if a tube amp is relatively well performing or not, the same is the case for cartridges. SS amps and DAC normally has so low numbers that it does not matter, as long as they are not broken.

In the case of Tubeamps the makers often inflate the power spect like stating 25 watt, when the amplifier passer 3 or 5% distortion at 10watt, Measurements then tells the truth, since 5% distortion is about the highest most people will accept listening too before something sounds wrong.

Frequency response should be within limits, I recently sold A SUT because the low frequency extension was to poor both audibly and confirmed by my measurements , but the store still sell them and speak highly of them. If the measurements had been public the would not sell many I think. ..

Noise level and anomalies is also easy to judge from measurements I will not like hum in a commercial product, even if the music obscures it. These thing show up in measurements too.

So I think measurements can be of help to judge the relative performance and quality control , if that is OK and it sounds good , everything is well, if it sounds good but measures sub par, I am not interested.

Here is an example of two tubeamps I have owned. We do not have to listen to know that the Cayin 300b is the better amp, having 1% distortion at 30hz vs 10% for the other.I can confidently say that my Accuphase A-48 both measure and sound superior to both tube amps.


Then the Cayin 300b with different maker of the driver tube ( Black line is Stereophile test data)



And finally a sound example the other tube amp Megtube /J.Soundlab converted to a headphone amp. Quite horrible noise data and other problems, but may become obscured by the music, or maybe not

Recorded from the headphone output ( about 4 ohm output resistance, and 10 ohm load for the tubes). Operating far from clipping so distortion is not high in tube amp terms. With speakers or headphones the sound will change of course..

 

[PeterA]

I don’t understand. Are you saying measurements Class D amps sound better than SETs since Ongaku doesn’t measure different than a regular SET?

I suspect the measurements are different, but I don’t know because I haven’t looked at any of the measurements and I don’t know what the measurements are measuring.

I was merely questioning your comment that the SET does not measure as well as class D. If something does not measure as well, but it sounds better then I would question what good measurements mean. Maybe the SET measurements better correlate to what we perceive as the sound of real instruments.

 

[mtemur]

I suspect the measurements are different, but I don’t know because I haven’t looked at any of the measurements and I don’t know what the measurements are measuring.

I was merely measuring your comment that the SET does not measure as well as class D. If something does not measure as well, but it sounds better then I would question what good measurements mean. Maybe the SET measurements better correlate to what we perceive as the sound of real instruments.

Thanks for explaining in detail, now I understand.