Low bar means hardly any dissapointments
I have nothing with reviewers really .
Stopped reading 12 years ago .
What manufacturers have to say is much more interesting
What is a reviewer?
- Thread starter Elliot G.
- Start date
Low bar means hardly any dissapointments
I have nothing with reviewers really .
Stopped reading 12 years ago .
What manufacturers have to say is much more interesting
to me a hifi reviewer is anyone who tries gear to talk about it, without an agenda to likely own the gear. OTOH buying and selling, cycling through gear that way, is something different. whereas you have to talk it up to sell it and keep the process going. on line bloggers who cycle through gear are especially low value data points as it's such an agenda rich situation trying for clicks. some become/or are dealers. that's the lowest value data point. why bother?
entertainment is always a factor, of course. nothing wrong with liking those blogs. just don't get too carried away....and end up holding the bag.
so the process of gear acquisition and disposal separates reviewers and lesser semi-enthusiast cases. nothing wrong with being an enthusiast, and they might have more street cred in particular cases. i just don't view it as formal reviewing.
and when a reviewer is buying the gear, or owns it, i consider the time owned to judge the reviewer perspective. if they have owned it for 3-4 years, that then means something different to me. if it's long term (over 12 months) loaned, then that again means another thing.
no right or wrong to any of this, simply how i value it. it's all data points, just like hearing gear at shows. and not all data points are created equal.
i do almost always value (positively and negatively) what an enthusiast known to me says, more significantly (again positive or negative) than a reviewer. especially if i have a rapport with that person.
writing a good review is a completely separate subject. back in the day i wrote a couple of hifi reviews/articles and determined i did not have the hunger to properly learn that craft and packed it in. i respect the effort involved. it was temping to go down the accommodation acquisition road, but i would rather shoot from the hip as the mood dictates, and just have fun.
entertainment is always a factor, of course. nothing wrong with liking those blogs. just don't get too carried away....and end up holding the bag.
so the process of gear acquisition and disposal separates reviewers and lesser semi-enthusiast cases. nothing wrong with being an enthusiast, and they might have more street cred in particular cases. i just don't view it as formal reviewing.
and when a reviewer is buying the gear, or owns it, i consider the time owned to judge the reviewer perspective. if they have owned it for 3-4 years, that then means something different to me. if it's long term (over 12 months) loaned, then that again means another thing.
no right or wrong to any of this, simply how i value it. it's all data points, just like hearing gear at shows. and not all data points are created equal.
i do almost always value (positively and negatively) what an enthusiast known to me says, more significantly (again positive or negative) than a reviewer. especially if i have a rapport with that person.
writing a good review is a completely separate subject. back in the day i wrote a couple of hifi reviews/articles and determined i did not have the hunger to properly learn that craft and packed it in. i respect the effort involved. it was temping to go down the accommodation acquisition road, but i would rather shoot from the hip as the mood dictates, and just have fun.
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nothing wrong with buying reviewed gear, or reviewing gear you might want to buy. and i did not infer that. but when that happens such a review is a different thing than a formal review without those factors, in my mind. might end up being more valuable, or less. it just depends.
i think it's simply important to equip yourself with knowledge about where reviewers are coming from. then just enjoy and learn with as much context as possible. and if you personally know the reviewer or are familiar with their review history even better.
personally i do enjoy reading reviews on gear i relate to, and filing it in my memory. it fills out my data points to understand things. and it's mostly enjoyable......sometimes very.
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actually i don’t want reviewers opinions but rather a definition of what exactly is the purpose of reviewers in audio? It seems that they are all over the place with no standards or basis of comparison even within platforms or publications
So your opinion is it’s someone with an opinion is that correct?
It’s strange to me that even within the same platform reviewers don’t listen to other reviewers reference systems. How is even speaking the same language possible .
It’s like asking food critics to review dishes or restaurants with no training or comparative knowledge. If reviewer A is the editor and top dog shouldn’t all reviewers at least listen to what he is using as some reference to the platforms point of view. If no one listens to anyone’s system IMO it’s just whatever the heck you like is the outcome .
That to me is truly unserious and to
me not helpful at all.
It’s no more valid IMO than any opinion on any forum or site, it’s just an opinion period
I personally think reviewers should be critics and be able to defend their positions and only listening to what you have is well not helpful
If i had a platform the critics would have to listen together in a regular basis .
BTW HP did this
It’s like asking food critics to review dishes or restaurants with no training or comparative knowledge. If reviewer A is the editor and top dog shouldn’t all reviewers at least listen to what he is using as some reference to the platforms point of view. If no one listens to anyone’s system IMO it’s just whatever the heck you like is the outcome .
That to me is truly unserious and to
me not helpful at all.
It’s no more valid IMO than any opinion on any forum or site, it’s just an opinion period
I personally think reviewers should be critics and be able to defend their positions and only listening to what you have is well not helpful
If i had a platform the critics would have to listen together in a regular basis .
BTW HP did this
my own view is that there are no rules for reviewers, maybe some loose guidelines at best. it's up the reviewer to make a case (maybe over a series of reviews) about his/her viewpoints, and tools used for the review(s). then the reader has to do the work to find proper context for the review conclusions.
any rules or strong expectations will just confuse things. i don't want filters or some sort of format. i want the real feelings or as close to it as possible. if the reviewer personally chooses to have a particular approach then fine.
unless it's ASR, or Atkinson doing measurements. and honestly in those cases just ignore it as it's not relevant to music reproduction enjoyment.
any rules or strong expectations will just confuse things. i don't want filters or some sort of format. i want the real feelings or as close to it as possible. if the reviewer personally chooses to have a particular approach then fine.
unless it's ASR, or Atkinson doing measurements. and honestly in those cases just ignore it as it's not relevant to music reproduction enjoyment.
i think a reviewer can never be unbiased, ie they are too close to the money pot to say bad about any product. that is not to say that reviewers are bad - contrary..... you can never mix a relationship up with money....be it a husband and wife or a reviewer and his audiophile friend. money always breaks that relationship no more so that for a reviewer and his audiophile audience where one earns it and the other spends it - ie the power and equation will never be the same for either party
When I started in this hobby, in the mid 70's, I had total faith in the reviews that I was exposed to - Australian HiFi and Hifi Choice (UK).
Although the reviews were subjective, they were relatively concise and seemed to be genuinely aimed at helping the consumer sort through the large range of available product.
I put my first system together from positive reviews, and held on to that system for over 10 years. For the curious it was a Thorens TD166/Grace 707/Supex 900E, Supex stepup, Sansui 717 amp, Canton LE600 speakers, and Stax SRX headphones.
Now, my understanding is that, just a few years prior to my interest in the hobby, reviews were very much technical tests, specifications, and or feature lists. The early subjective reviews that I read (Australian & UK) were often group tests that usually involved a group of industry experts/reviewers in a single blind comparative listen. Feature reviews were concise with a brief product description, subjective impressions, and technical assessment/measurements.
The magazines certainly changed over the years, with reviews becoming longer, more descriptive, more detailed and more effusive. When you read some reviews, you were/are lead to believe buying the product would change your life.
Over time, the reasons for me buying magazines changed from looking to purchase to:
- collect reviews confirming my purchasing decisions; then
- learn more about different products and technology; and finally
- for entertainment/amusement.
For me, today's magazines serve no value in any purchasing decisions I might make. This is as much a consequence of my evolution as an audiophile/music lover as it is the changes in the magazines and reviewers.
Although the reviews were subjective, they were relatively concise and seemed to be genuinely aimed at helping the consumer sort through the large range of available product.
I put my first system together from positive reviews, and held on to that system for over 10 years. For the curious it was a Thorens TD166/Grace 707/Supex 900E, Supex stepup, Sansui 717 amp, Canton LE600 speakers, and Stax SRX headphones.
Now, my understanding is that, just a few years prior to my interest in the hobby, reviews were very much technical tests, specifications, and or feature lists. The early subjective reviews that I read (Australian & UK) were often group tests that usually involved a group of industry experts/reviewers in a single blind comparative listen. Feature reviews were concise with a brief product description, subjective impressions, and technical assessment/measurements.
The magazines certainly changed over the years, with reviews becoming longer, more descriptive, more detailed and more effusive. When you read some reviews, you were/are lead to believe buying the product would change your life.
Over time, the reasons for me buying magazines changed from looking to purchase to:
- collect reviews confirming my purchasing decisions; then
- learn more about different products and technology; and finally
- for entertainment/amusement.
For me, today's magazines serve no value in any purchasing decisions I might make. This is as much a consequence of my evolution as an audiophile/music lover as it is the changes in the magazines and reviewers.
The odd cap here and there , a resistor or two maybe, wipe her down with a rag , and still a decent system to this day .
It gave me a lot of musical satisfaction for many years. I subsequently had many "vastly superior" systems in the 90's that had greater resolution and detail but left me frustrated and dissatisfied.
Depends for example Stereophile does listening and measurements. Many don't. I find opinions based on just listening to be nothing more than someone else's listening experience so for evaluations it caries very little weight.
I have had much better and productive interactions with other hobbyist that are working to actually build something from scratch where there is a open exchange of listening experiences and in many case measurements to try to understand any correlation between the two.
Rob
Old sansui have great tone equal transistor or tube love it , today i would call it the little brother of kondo.
this amps sound fantastic best sound au 717/ 919 or au 111. it's worth spending real money for revision. the build quality is amazing look inside after revision
Before cleaned and revision
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It is a pity that I don't have the Sansui any more. I gave it to my brother when I moved over to the UK in 1990. He put it on the nature strip
when he got a home theatre system.
Thats really pity, i never seen a better phonoboard in a intregrated amp.It is a pity that I don't have the Sansui any more. I gave it to my brother when I moved over to the UK in 1990. He put it on the nature strip
disassembling this amp takes hours to clean so many switches. you can clean them and then they are like new, nowadays there is only plastic crap in amps.
Revised amp cost ~1.5-2k€ on ebay worth every penny trust me.
sorry for offtopic.
I have learned a lot reading interviews with designers. They are honest about the challenges and trade-offs. They don't follow the audio myths; the good ones cut their own path.
Manufacturers are interesting when they talk about how these designs get translated into a product. For example, when they talk about the tolerances for parts and what testing goes into selection and how many parts are rejected. Without reading such accounts, one might assume that getting consistency is automatic.
Consider speaker drivers and cross-overs. One manufacturer listens to each pair of speakers before they are shipped. If they don't sound right to him, they are modified. Similar to the last steps in manufacturing a piano.
Whilst I would concur with some of your considerations Mike , with regard to the references that I posted previously , when does a Reviewer of a particular brand cross the line from ‘Reviewer’ into that of forum ‘Influencer’ , Ergo how much impartiality can one attach to ‘The Review’ In light of referencing one brand up to and beyond the forum search cap of 7 pages / 200 posts ? :
Search results for query: Lamm
www.whatsbestforum.com
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i see zero concern. nothing nefarious. just a guy who reviewed gear, liked it, and never looked back.Whilst I would concur with some of your considerations Mike , with regard to the references that I posted previously , when does a Reviewer of a particular brand cross the line from ‘Reviewer’ into that of forum ‘Influencer’ , Ergo how much impartiality can one attach to ‘The Review’ In light of referencing one brand up to and beyond the forum search cap of 7 pages / 200 posts ? :
Search results for query: Lamm
a 9 year old review, in 2 locations. backed up by brand ownership since then. a case for real commitment. it simply adds weight to the original text. no different from Fremer and darTZeel. both reviewers could easily switch at accommodation prices, and sell them off, but so far have not.
not a classic review, true. but carries more meaning in both situations. much more.
as i wrote; there is no right and wrong with reviews; there is just context. to me the opposite of this is the influencer/reviewer who buys used high level gear, writes/talks about it, then sells it and moves on to the next piece. what is real in that situation? and what is just surface? click bait. entertainment. both situations have value, but one has much more value. because the context is more substantial. we could make a case that brand bias carries an influence, which of course is true. but to me that is simply part of the context and the reader/observer must do their own correction and validation. is that view fair? does the brand bias appear to be 'put on'? or does it jive with our own views?
over time hard to hide what is actually happening. how do review systems evolve? what are the reviewers actually doing? facts are facts.
if we are looking for actual baloney/conspiracy theories from the hifi press, take a look at any hifi show review/write-up. what you see is an almost 100% correlation between show coverage and advertisers in the publication. the crew gets assigned brands and areas to cover and have a job to do. they might love all sorts of stuff they hear, but they make sure they write about people paying the bills. and the awards from the show are most likely advertisers.
there are exceptions for sure.
but honestly this is the most egregious/obvious thing i see these days. and not the end of the world, either. but what happens. context is obvious.
there are exceptions for sure.
but honestly this is the most egregious/obvious thing i see these days. and not the end of the world, either. but what happens. context is obvious.
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