Which gear reviewers do you respect / trust?

I was recently told by a so called well respected reviewer that the reason I didn't
rate the product was because I couldn't afford it.

That, for me, sums up HIFI Journalism in one sentence.

 

do you have reading skills problem? arent you a english teacher?
Schiit Yggdrasil Stereophile Review + Measurements | Page 20 | Super Best Audio Friends

they asked JA to respond. he did answer BS


"Atkinson slipped in that -90db 16-bit measurement in without mentioning that he increased the gain on the DAVE to unrealistic levels that would cause clipping. Sometimes not mentioning something is just as bad as lying. Atkinson of course offered the lame excuse that he wanted to concentrate on the 16-bit -90db pattern; while conveniently dismissing @ultrabike's very crucial point that he's effectively misleading readers as to the effective number of bits of the DAVE (when the DAVE volume is set to a typical usable level). Atkinson just seems to be making excuses as he pleases and being inconsistent with his criteria."

there's nothing else to add. JA cannot defend himself. that was not a mistake but a selective ommision of measurements. he manipulated the test methods to suit chord dave dac performance.

you, yourself, agree how their speaker classement is BS. Id say i

 

Yes. And that is the very crux of it. And why no one savvy trusts a magazine or site that relies on advertising dollars to survive.

JGH may've caved in the end, but he was essentially correct in his fears of what accepting ad revenue would do to his magazine.

So, we're back to these publications as 'info-tainment', of a sort. Catalogs/product-awareness publications.

Nothing automatically horrible about that. Some ppl want to buy catalogs/product-awareness publications. But you'd be very foolish indeed to use them as a significant determinant of what equipment you purchase.

The bad part comes when readers see these publications as something other than what they really are. As with anything, those who lack sophistication tend to get burned.
.

 

Came across this tidbit, 'The (Secret) Rules of Audio Reviewing', on Arthur Salvatore's site.

While I'm not exactly a Salvatore fan, it is an interesting read.

The (Secret) Rules of Audio Reviewing.
.

 

^Entertaining

 

I understand your opinion, but I disagree with it. These are magazines of consumer journalism for niche audience that publish a range of content including equipment reviews, music reviews, thought-pieces, interviews, and reportage of various sort from the oldest fashion sort of sending someone somewhere and having them report back what they saw to all the equipment testing a publication like Stereophile does.

I know these days the internet is full of semi-pro and purely hobbyist publication, with nothing much in the way of editorial standards and oversight, and no kind of clear mission to cover everything that's might be considered an important or meaningful story in the hobby -- they just let bloggers write about what they like to write about and published sometimes with barely a copy editing never mind developing the whole piece with full, thorough editorial oversight.

The challenges of navigation the conflicts of interest in areas like hobbyist, trade and local publishing, are what they are, they are what they've always been. Having been a publisher of my own trade publication at one point, and having spent my whole life in the new media business -- and not just in the "hard" news, general readership side -- my feeling about this whole notion of ad-supported media is entirely different from yours. You seem to feel like if a publication is ad-support, it can't be trusted at all ever. I think the reality of the entire set of relationships and the nature of publishing is much more complex, dynamic and nuanced than that and that most people in it are trying to do a good job serving their readers.

 

I never read Stereophile in the days before it was ad supported, so I never had the experience of the magazine being one way and then the other. Some one certainly can read Consumer Reports' reviews of consumer electronics if they want an opinion untouched by the the potential conflict of interest of advertising. They'll probably tell you all amps sound the same and just buy features. Maybe they're right, maybe all this subjective reviewing and listening for these differences is all false impressions created by marketing, I mean, CR is the only on unsullied by the corrupting influence of ad support, so it must be more accurate journalism, right?

 

Is this a straw-man attempt to pull me into an argument about specific publications or are you honestly interested in my opinion about the current standards of Stereophile and CR?

 

This is why I choose NO reviewers. I have no idea if they hear like me. I find many of them spend their time talking about their emotional engagement and involvement with the music with one component vs. another, often in not very explanatory language, wich is perfectly useless and meaningless information to me because a person's emotional response to a sound is entirely within that person's ears and is completely a non-transferrable experience to anyone else. Sound and electronic equipment doesn't convey emotion. Ever.

That's just stuff I'll skip over entirely in a review, any discussion of the reviewer's emotional state, or about their personal life or the kind of disposable throat clearing crap that most reviewers lard up their pieces with.

Art Dudley is one of the worst on the later regard, so I just googled his name and came up with this lead from his most recent Stereophile column: "Sometimes I feign interest in living in the Soviet Union of the 1950s and '60s. This happens mostly when I'm shopping for toothpaste at my local supermarket, where the toothpaste aisle is as long as a football field. 'I don't want so many choices,' I say in my Abe Simpson voice, 'because all these choices are stupid. I wish I lived in the USSR: Shopping for toothpaste wouldn't take so long.' But I'm only kidding."

It's the classic case of the "disposable lead" you and then throw it away at the end of saying it, meaning you didn't need to say it at all. If you're a journalist, your first editor should have shame you out of writing a disposable lead within weeks of you taking your first job as writer. Plus, what the hell do I care about Art Dudley in the toothpaste aisle in the supermarket. If the second word in a review is "I," something is probably wrong with the piece's focus if the goal is to inform he reader about the equipment at hand.

My issue with audio journalism is no so much with the purported corruption of the enterprise, it's with the value and usefulness of the enterprise.

I just stick for the most part with the reported parts of the reviews -- the circuit design, the history of the product, the specs and/or measurements, etc. and lightly skim or skip all together Art Dudley in the toothpaste aisle or Joe Schoe's goosebumps.

 

Yes and no. I don't think it's exactly a straw man, at least I don't intend it exactly as such. I think there's a hard line that people seem to be drawing, including you in your prior post, that being ad-supported inherently and fatally compromises the editorial content. If that's so, than non-ad supported reviews ought to inherently be more biased and untainted and, therefore more accurate. If there's more to the story than just an on-off switch: ad-support= corrupt, untrustworthy, inaccurate; no-ad support=unbiased, honest, fearless accuracy, then there's more on both ends: the non-ad supported editorial may be good or bad based on many things other than just the publication's business model; and the ad-supported editorial maybe good or bad based on many things other than just the business model, which I think actually is the case, much more of a gray-area sort of mix.

 

No one in particular.

When I'm researching gear I read different reviews. If there is a consensus on quality, I seek it out.

For my major purchases I always audition the equipment and speak with local dealers that I trust.

I would never buy a major piece of gear based on any one review or from an online source.

 

Fair enough - To be honest my eyes glaze over most of his measurements anyway (and I am quite tired with a bout of Insomnia) as I find them too inconsistent, incomplete and the reviewers almost always choose a product that sounds good and isn't one of the products that measures particularly well. So when the measurements don't match the listening preferences of their reviewers - they're a waste of time. Listening trumps graphs. Can't listen to graphs. But yes if you are going to do them you need to do them fairly to all.

 

Definitely this. It pays to do due diligence when researching any product (stereo equipment or otherwise) before buying.

 

I remember your post from a long while back regarding the first person. My upcoming review I have written in the third person (and I dropped as much of the preamble and references to non audio related topics). As the product is entry level and could be viewed as a beginner tube amp for many - I do have some explanation for terms like auto-bias so that a new tube audiophile will understand what is being discussed. This will undoubtedly bore veteran audiophiles. I did promise you (or perhaps it was another poster) that I would personally give third person an attempt without using "I" in the review. Although, I did have to torture some sentences in order to pull that off. I tried to write it in a more matter of fact style and I did not go on and on about specific recordings since most people probably don't have the recordings anyway. More of a small music microdynamics commentary and bigger scale recordings commentary.

And it's an $825 US amplifier including shipping because to tell you the truth I am getting sick of an industry peddling the notion that you must spend $20,000 on an amplifier to get high end sound. I want stuff that is high quality, sounds really nice, has a little bit of panache and that people can actually afford. In other words good value. As my dad used to say - people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

 

Of course, it's not so much about the third vs first person as a voice as it about about the focus of the review being on the product and the information not the reviewer, but the first person is a good proxy for that. And I think explanation of that sort, as you describe the explanation of the bias scheme, is really important both to audio journalism and to the future of the hobby. If it's going to survive it can't just be on the backs of selling upgrades to aging baby boomers, and I think one service that the mainstream audio publications used to provide, that aren't really so much part of the current universe of post-stereophile/tas kind of clubby, insular, reviewing -- is something that used to be a staple of general interest consumer journalism: explaining what makes one thing better than another, explaining what to look for in a product, explaining how things work. I think more of that not just in reviews but in separate essays and what have you, for the general hobbyist, not the techie, would really benefit the whole hobby, especially for newcomers to it.

 

amen. especially in the SS department. Tubes amps cost money to build, but when I see accuphase SS amps going for 10k, its laughable and sad.

I would also extend your comments to speakers, DAC, ect.

 

Thank you for the much needed clarification. No, I don't think that being ad free equates to honesty. This is a logical fallacy as one can push a very unsavory agenda without getting paid for doing so.

I do however think that a publication depending on the support of an interested party is compromised. It may claim otherwise and these claims can be based on a honest belief that they will never bias their reviews because of advertisement but this too is a fallacy. The exchange of information and ideas between the reviewer and reader cannot be a dialog when there is a third party financing the reviewer and it is glaringly obvious to me that at some stage this third party will no longer be a silent partner.

 

Here's the deal. Everyone can point out the negatives in the audio publishing industry. What can be done to correct things? Take 'The Absolute Sound' for instance. The owner Tom Martin has deep pockets. From articles I have read, TAS really doesn't make money. The magazine is a labor of love for Martin. What can you do to change that magazine?

The two main writers/editors are Robert Harley and Jonathan Valin. Harley's claim to fame is to pronounce some audio piece 'the best he has ever heard.' As you might have guessed, a few issues later, Harley has found the new, best thing. He is also very thin skinned. Don't try to criticize him or the magazine.

Next up, Jonathan Valin. Here is the guy who was caught selling loaner cables on Audiogon. He probably should have been fired on the spot. But no, he is still reviewing the highest priced audio equipment.

You will never change the direction of that magazine by dropping your subscription.

 

HiViNyws channel

Why I like him:

1) it appears he buys everything out of his own pocket, so he's probably not shilling

2) I love his passion! He actually looks like he enjoys what he is doing

3) great reference system as well as a quality "lower end" system

 

There isn't any one reviewer or set of reviewers whose opinions I hold above others. In truth, most of the reviews I read just become immersed in the general noise from both the print/online mags and the gazillion personal opinions of strangers on the internet. Truth is, it's a wonder that I've been able to sift through that noise to make purchasing decisions at all. But once in awhile something rises above the noise just enough for me to take notice. That's when my ears and my personal tastes come into play. (You've got to hear the stuff for yourself. Preferably, more than once before parting with the $.)

As to the side question, though I find Art Audley's writing style to be entertaining we have different preferences when it comes to audio gear. He's a tube amplification with horn speakers kind of guy, and I'm not. I can listen to such a setup and hear/appreciate what he and other's like about it. But the auditory preference boxes checked by such a system are not the ones I care most about. (The Audio Note show demos I've experienced fall into this category. A nice, pleasurable sound for sure, but it's not MY sound.)

That's the best thing about this hobby: there are so many different flavors out there. Who am I (or anyone else) to say that my favorite is right and all of the others are wrong.

 

Most of the gear I own has been reviewed by one or multiple magazines. This is mostly coincidence, as I auditioned most pieces before buying and take reviews with a large helping of salt. As much as I despise the reviewing style of some of these guys, (HR of Stereophile for example) after sifting through the nonsense, I find I agree with some of their opinions. This is not to say I agree with most reviews on most gear, but overall, most reviews on pieces I own resemble my experiences to a large degree.

Living in Middle America makes it difficult to attend the large audio shows. As such, reviews, dealer's opinions, forum opinions, and auditions of brands the dealers carry are my means of exposure.

Luckily, I finally found a dealer who seems trustworthy, seems to value the same types of sound, and doesn't try to push his most expensive pieces. In fact, many times he has recommended pieces that he doesn't carry. I was surprised to learn that he reads these magazines, as many of the brands he carries don't get much attention from reviewers.

Overall, I'd say I don't trust reviewers. I do believe that marketing dollars have heavy infuence on what they write. However, I think there is at least some minor value scattered among the pages. It's a matter of reading between the lines, sifting through the ramblings, and comparing notes to your own.

If a reviewer describes a class D amplifier as the least bit clinical or "etched," that's a product I'm not likely to audition, even if he raves about every other parameter. This is largely due to my own experiences with class D. On the other hand, if multiple reviewers rave about a class D amp and none mention the traditional class D pitfalls, I might consider the possibility that the amp is a rare exception. Overall, this is of minor value to me, but value nonetheless.

 

Until a major review publication regularly gives "don't buy" or "not worth the price" reviews, I don't trust any of them. However, I continue to read many reviews simply for the entertainment value.

I suspect most of us use audio equipment reviews for much the same reason we read political editorials. We already know what we believe in -we just want to read someone else tell us why.

 

Maybe that is a problem with the measurements section, or maybe it's a problem with those reviewers' liking a particular type of sound, one that doesn't reflect accurate reproduction. We don't know by just noting the discrepancy, do we? Or maybe it's not a "problem" at all, just an interesting pattern. If one doesn't take the measurements, how does one know in what respect they agree with what one hears? I would hope that at least frequency-response measurements should be mappable into preferences . . . and I suspect that those who favor low-power SETs favor a certain type of colored sound. Well, many people prefer Hollywood movies, where everyone is beautiful and the ending is always happy. Is it a "problem" with reality that people prefer happy endings?

Whether any individual uses measurements or not, it seems important to me that they be taken and compiled, if for nothing else, so that we understand better how the human ear's response and the human preferences align with measurable quantities. One can't dismiss all objective approaches to audio because in some cases, they don't agree with some preferences.

 

The best old-time "standard bearers", IMO, were: J. Gordon Holt and Len Feldman. Today, though, I find myself reading the U.K. mags MORE than Stereophile and/or TAS.

 

Well this is good food for thought. Like the chicken and the egg argument. Is it the ears that are correct and the measurement isn't matching or is the measurement that is correct and the ears that are wrong?

With regards to SET is is also important to be fair to the technology and not put the SET into a test that is geared to make Solid State look good. For instance SS measures very well at high power and it measures very badly at low power (tiny fractions of a watt where sound begins). Set is the exact opposite - it measure very badly at high power and measures superbly well at fractions of a watt. So so long as you do not overdrive the SET you will not have distortion. This is one reason you have a lot of SS owners often state things like (this stereo needs to be played loud or "pushed" to sound good). People often assume that problem is related to the loudspeaker that it needs more power to open up (can be true some of the time) but it doesn't explain the scenario when the same speaker is used.