Negative show report posts... enough is enough.

[Alan Sircom]

Shouldn't the reviewer know the product, be able to place this speaker in the proper context? Describe the sound, what you are getting for the money? How it was designed to be used? If not, he is a bad reviewer. It would be like a guy taking a lawnmower and using it as hedge clippers and then reviewing it saying is a terrible hedge clipper and it cut off my hands to boot.

Up to a point yes. And, in fairness, most reviewers who have been doing this for a while are entirely able to contextualise in the vast majority of cases.

But this only works up to a point. You still have to do some matching of person to product. A reviewer should be flexible enough not to let their own tastes dictate the tone of the review too strongly, but there are physical, domestic, and price concerns to take into account. Many reviewers have a self-imposed upper and lower limit in terms of loudspeaker size and even system cost, in part because things significantly beyond those limits are outside their area of specialism. For example, I can confidently say the DALI Zensor 1 is the best budget loudspeaker I've heard, but I've not heard enough current budget speakers to say they are the best budget loudspeakers with confidence because that market sector is presently outside my remit.

It's the editor's role to make sure the reviewer is sufficiently grounded in a given sector of the market to comment upon that product as fairly as possible.

It's not really a question of using a lawnmower as hedge clippers. It's about not giving the biggest ride-on petrol driven mower you've ever seen to the guy who only reviews hover mowers on his postage stamp sized lawn and expecting good results.

 

[Joe Whip]

Well Alan, that would seem to be the editor's job, the match the equipment with the reviewer with the expertise to review it? BTW, I hope to be back in the UK soon! London is our favorite town.

 

[bonzo75]

Alan, Keith, on reflection I kind of like our UK forums. On those forums everyone slams 99% of the products, but then everyone criticizes each other's comments and everyone else, so any review, positive or negative, eventually leads to the same result. Regular posters have their own Trust radar where they trust the opinions of certain people and give two hoots for those of others.

 

[Audio Guy]

IMO, it's too bad Yelp doesn't have a section for audio shows. Come on folks, it's the 21st century and pithy negative reviews by the hoi polloi are par for the course. Journalism is never about burying a story when the facts don't fit the narrative. You don't go back to your editor and say "this or that room sucked so I'm not going to write anything." That's a joke!

If you jam six figures worth of gear into a hotel room and it isn't your first outing, you should have a clue how to make it sound decent. After all, your livelyhood probably depends on it, and inevitably the show sponsors are going to allow the fifth estate through the doors because it's free publicity.

 

[sbo6]

After the OP Peter I find this little gem from you fascinating.

This is beautifully written and a wonderful example of "think before you click."

 

[spiritofmusic]

In the world that Peter envisages, only positive comment is posted. Negative comments never materialise.
That should be fun, as some products will never get mentioned as a result.
Don't dare open a thread asking why product X doesn't have any reviews.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Much of this seems to come down to the idea that it's all about the positives only and avoiding the negatives. Good criticism usually recognises both. Giving healthy and respectful criticism to designers about their creations is however I understand a bit of an art. The more passionate the designer the more potentially involved and seemingly personal all this can become.

I teach landscape designers and they are all expected to regularly give peer review to each other's projects at their design presentations. A designer's creation is fairly much like their child.

How to avoid tears and a bloodbath. Starts with... Tell them first what you really like/love about their work and then discuss where you see things could be even better. Honesty doesn't have to be a thoughtless barb... share the love first then give them further opportunities to improve.

It surprises me that here we are all drawn to a pursuit where transparency and fidelity are held as paramount virtues and that when it comes to writing assessment on gear surely if we are true to ourselves that exact same aim for the value of transparency and fidelity should apply. However I'm sure that with many audio journalists expressing any of these sentiments would actually just be preaching to the converted. We are all strikingly committed to this strange and wondrous musical journey and I don't really believe anybody goes into it without enthusiasm and commitment to the highest intentions.

 

[Joe Whip]

One good thing about this thread is that it does give us a glimpse into the minds and editorial policies of some reviewers, magazines and on line publications. It kind of reenforces my impressions over the many years I have been in this hobby, especially in the last 5 years or so where things seem to have changed for the worse. I guess we will never see a negative review on Peter's site. Nothing but white glove treatment, which is really too bad.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

One good thing about this thread is that it does give us a glimpse into the minds and editorial policies of some reviewers, magazines and on line publications. It kind of reenforces my impressions over the many years I have been in this hobby, especially in the last 5 years or so where things seem to have changed for the worse. I guess we will never see a negative review on Peter's site. Nothing but white glove treatment, which is really too bad.

I do comparative reviews extoling the positives and negatives of a component, as do all my reviewers. The thread is about coward posting and show realities. Please stay on topic.

 

[Audio Guy]

Lately the boards, and I mean all of the boards and the 'zines (as well) have been posting negative show room reports.

I believe this is the lowest of low behavior. It is frankly cowardly, if you don't have anything positive to say then why say anything at all. How would you like it if I was invited into your home and then publically bashed your system?

We all hear differently. We all have biases. By posting a negative report you are in effect elevating yourself as an expert and trust me, you are not an expert. Experts know why rooms have problems, experts know why components get mismatched. Experts know that certain music can make or break a room.

Do these cowards know how hard it is to setup a system in a hotel room in one day?

I've frankly had enough of this behavior.

Peter Breuninger

PS: I will also add to this thread, if you PM me regarding my OP, I will make it public. One coward has already done this and since I did not state this in advance, the cowardly PM will remain private. All future PMs will be made public.

If the problem is the hotel room. meaning challenges involved with unfamiliar equipment pairings and issues with room acoustics in a new space are potentially the reason for negative reports about rooms, then it follows that a properly set up home system would not suffer from these issues. So it would be much less likely that there'd be something to criticize about the home system. Furthermore, having a guest in your home is quite different from setting hours aside at a public show for members of the press and bloggers to have exclusive access to listening rooms so they can write about their impressions. I don't see the parallel.

 

[Joe Whip]

I do comparative reviews extoling the positives and negatives of a component, as do all my reviewers. The thread is about coward posting and show realities. Please stay on topic.

There has been quite a bit in this thread on editorial policies. I don't see how my post is off topic. And BTW, please ditch the word coward.

 

[rbbert]

Absolutely, reviewers ,'review' in the most un scientific manner, always sighted, we often know nothing about Their credentials or proof of performance, their listening room or indeed the state of their hearing.
Keith.

Actually in some cases we can. In reading reviews about the sound quality of specific recordings/masterings, one can often use both objective measurements and subjective listening impressions on one's own system to realize how poor the reviewer's credentials are. Or when a writer or reviewer starts discussing how each WAV>FLAC>WAV conversion degrades the sound by a certain percentage (5, 10, ?) and you can easily test that yourself. Or when a magazine's editor proclaims a product the best he has heard in 25 years of reviewing and the same magazine's chief reviewer can't stand the same product. Pretty accurate assumptions can be made IMHO.

 

[rbbert]

There has been quite a bit in this thread on editorial policies. I don't see how my post is off topic. And BTW, please ditch the word coward.

I also have been wondering exactly what the word "coward" is supposed to mean in this context?

 

[TheMadMilkman]

I also have been wondering exactly what the word "coward" is supposed to mean in this context?

I can only presume it refers to any non-expert who doesn't use their real name online.

 

[rbbert]

I can only presume it refers to any non-expert who doesn't use their real name online.

And I guess there are a few here, although I am not one.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

I can only presume it refers to any non-expert who doesn't use their real name online.

 

[Alan Sircom]

Alan, Keith, on reflection I kind of like our UK forums. On those forums everyone slams 99% of the products, but then everyone criticizes each other's comments and everyone else, so any review, positive or negative, eventually leads to the same result. Regular posters have their own Trust radar where they trust the opinions of certain people and give two hoots for those of others.

Yes, and threads like this do give people some insight into how the world is not a uniform place.

I'm not wholly convinced of the efficacy of the UK forums, though. Although they can be entertaining, they also tend toward outright hostility toward anything that doesn't fit the profile of that forum, and I think that drives a lot of people away. If you ask a legitimate question about whether a CD transport makes a difference to sound when PFM is going through one of its periodic 'all you need is a $20 DVD player' pogroms, you'll get 50 posts of vitriol and spleen venting within the hour; 49 of them from the same three people arguing over the same ground for the 973rd time.

My take on reviewing is to try and judge something fairly, with both its positives and negatives. This is seen as 'too soft' in some parts of the world, where a product review roster isn't really seen as balanced unless some of those reviews end with "...so I killed it with fire.". OTOH, it's seen as 'too frank' in other places, where making a fairly bald observation, such as a streamer's inability to play gapless, is perceived as open hostility toward the device under test.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

My name is in my signature here. On others I only use a moniker. Guess I'm a P/T Coward.

 

[DaveC]

There have been a lot of logical fallacies and poor excuses to support the very strange idea of only publishing positive reviews imo. Don't journalists have an obligation to their audience to report honestly? How does only publishing good reviews help the readers of your publication? If you were a reader perusing reviews on a potential purchase and everything you read is positive how does this help? I do agree there is a lot of good gear out there but it's not all equal and there is an especially wide range of value for the money, which I feel is rarely addressed. I also wish there were more comparison articles like the car mags do. I think audio reviewers could learn a lot from the way car mags do reviews...

 

[bonzo75]

Yes, and threads like this do give people some insight into how the world is not a uniform place.

I'm not wholly convinced of the efficacy of the UK forums, though. Although they can be entertaining, they also tend toward outright hostility toward anything that doesn't fit the profile of that forum, and I think that drives a lot of people away. If you ask a legitimate question about whether a CD transport makes a difference to sound when PFM is going through one of its periodic 'all you need is a $20 DVD player' pogroms, you'll get 50 posts of vitriol and spleen venting within the hour; 49 of them from the same three people arguing over the same ground for the 973rd time.

My take on reviewing is to try and judge something fairly, with both its positives and negatives. This is seen as 'too soft' in some parts of the world, where a product review roster isn't really seen as balanced unless some of those reviews end with "...so I killed it with fire.". OTOH, it's seen as 'too frank' in other places, where making a fairly bald observation, such as a streamer's inability to play gapless, is perceived as open hostility toward the device under test.

I was just being satirical regarding the UK forums.