reviews....
- Thread starter Porsche
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I keep tabs on most reviewers, and for many I know what their sonic preferences are, which are straight shooters, and which tend to do softball reviews to keep everyone happy. Hence, I do find some reviews to be very helpful in getting a grasp on how some components might sound. So, I have a filter which I use to filter reviews for useful information.
Nothing beats an in home audition though, but that is becoming rarer to achieve.
Nothing beats an in home audition though, but that is becoming rarer to achieve.
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Reviews can be very useful as a general introduction to a product and its features. Reviews are also interesting just to see new products coming on the market and can help you make a list of items to consider if you are shopping.
I don’t put much credence in reviews beyond that because so many YouTube reviewers have conflicts of interest, often undisclosed. Magazine reviews are almost always positive for obvious reasons. Comparative reviews would be the most helpful such as “I auditioned speaker, A and speaker B and speaker C and here is how they compare in terms of sound quality, build quality, etc.“ You don’t see many of those but that’s what would actually be useful to me.
I don’t put much credence in reviews beyond that because so many YouTube reviewers have conflicts of interest, often undisclosed. Magazine reviews are almost always positive for obvious reasons. Comparative reviews would be the most helpful such as “I auditioned speaker, A and speaker B and speaker C and here is how they compare in terms of sound quality, build quality, etc.“ You don’t see many of those but that’s what would actually be useful to me.
Think there are key elements to a review:
1 - What it does
2 - How it does it
3 - How it sounds
4 - How it measures
Very few people do all 4 properly and only for a narrow range of products, usually linked to advertising spend.
I have zero interest in (3). I'm a novice by most standards, but know that some random person's subjective opinion counts for little.
The rest you can find out from a range of sources and AI searching makes it that much easier.
I have absolutely zero interest in sealed box products that cannot be scrutinised by a reviewer, even worse manufacturers that do not provide images inside sealed boxes. I assume the manufacturer has something to hide. I don't know why reviewers accept such products (I assume only in exchange for marketing spend).
So I don't sit and read an entire review, haven't for years. Nor do I buy the hifi magazine/informercials.
1 - What it does
2 - How it does it
3 - How it sounds
4 - How it measures
Very few people do all 4 properly and only for a narrow range of products, usually linked to advertising spend.
I have zero interest in (3). I'm a novice by most standards, but know that some random person's subjective opinion counts for little.
The rest you can find out from a range of sources and AI searching makes it that much easier.
I have absolutely zero interest in sealed box products that cannot be scrutinised by a reviewer, even worse manufacturers that do not provide images inside sealed boxes. I assume the manufacturer has something to hide. I don't know why reviewers accept such products (I assume only in exchange for marketing spend).
So I don't sit and read an entire review, haven't for years. Nor do I buy the hifi magazine/informercials.
You mean like this one....
What is done well here is pointing the reader toward the speaker that plays to the listener's music values.
In his introduction he says:You mean like this one....
What is done well here is pointing the reader toward the speaker that plays to the listener's music values.
“Consult El Diablo (€65,000), the latest Göbel Divin model, the compact Comtesse (€60,000) and the established but recently upgraded Stenheim Alumine 5-SX (€81,100) represent the class of the field, at least as far as box speakers that most audiophiles could both afford and actually accommodate goes. There will always be the outliers – ribbon or electrostatic panels, or high-efficiency (often part- or wholly-active) systems: think Clarisys or Avantgarde. But for the vast majority of dealers and their customers, this is where the action is.
What was he smoking when he wrote this?
The 5-SX costs £93,000 in the UK, three times average national full-time earnings. Do you now have to be in the top 0.001% to qualify as an audiophile?
If the vast majority of dealers and their customers were mainly buying this level of product, all those dealers would be flying off to the south of France in their private jets to their luxury villas every weekend. Which I assure you, they don’t.
Far more interesting, he was interviewed about how to write reviews (and how to run an audio magazine), which can be found here:
High Fidelity
He says that basically if you don’t buy advertising, you don’t get reviews, and if a product is no good it won’t be published because the publisher can’t afford to lose the advertiser. So you get the (basically dishonest) position that an editor will publish advertisements for products even though they may know they would not recommend it, because they need the money.
He reiterates this point by saying that if they don’t publish a review, you can assume that don’t like the product. So if they won’t review products by manufacturers who won’t buy advertising, are you to assume that they are no good?
He’s basically explaining how magazines/reviews is an infomercial business. The way he describes it is like a student asking an examiner to give him a grade based only on the questions he got right, ignoring the ones he got wrong.
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