I really hate how this term, along with “giant killer” is used, primarily because it’s rarely quantified. Punches above its weight? Okay then, what is it better than? What did it punch above for god’s sake? Same with giant killer. What giants did it kill? If you can’t tell us what products it is better than, then stop using those terms in reviews.
If you think hifi reviews are absurd, then read wine reviews. I honestly think a lot of wine reviewers are trolling people, just to see how far they can go.
This one is pretty galling: "I don't hesitate to recommend that it be auditioned by anyone with $17,000 to spare, and whose system suffers from bright or harsh sound" Aqua Acoustic Quality Aqua Formula xHD D/A processor Page 2 To make it worse, Herb at least cautions readers before buying that $17k magic pill: "I don't regard it as a pleasure machine, nor do I see it as a cure for systems that sound too bright. In my system, the Formula xHD was simply too opaque for a perfectionist DAC of any price." If Jason Sernius offers to help you with your system, it might be cheaper for you just to move to a new house.
I think there was a recent Stereophile review of some low-end Wharfedale Diamond speakers that seriously compared them to some ridiculous hi-zoot $216,000 ones. Don't ask me why. I think the reviewer must've been high at the time. .[/colo
My friends are still laughing about a Dutch wine review we once read. It claimed that if you drank the wine in question, cheerful lemons would appear in your living room and they would proceed to ornament the room with serpentines and garlands. The writer might have been a little sarcastic, I don't know. Or drunk.
I'm just waiting for this one... "Yes, the AudioMasterBlaster power amp DID explode in my face, setting over 80 percent of my body on fire and causing major second- and third-degree burns. HOWEVER, it must be said that I noticed as I ran screaming for the house fire extinguisher that it did so in such a EUPHONIC and NATURAL way that I really couldn't hold it against the equipment, which I am sure misbehaved due to some kind of set-up error by moi or perhaps an unexpected phase of the moon. An exciting, devil-may-care STEAL at $39,000, as the music truly comes ALIVE when you're worried about your own personal safety. Class A, Recommended." .
I wish I still had access to it, but at an old job where we dealt with 1000's of album one sheets, we collected quotes from Black Metal albums.
There may be some truth in it, the magnetic fields around the mains transformers, particularly toroids (The round ones) may interfere with each other. Amplifiers in PA rack systems are normally perfectly vertical over each other. Try playing with a cheap compass around a working amplifier or a magnetised 4 inch nail hanging balanced on a thread and you can see where the magnetic fields are strongest.
you can find it in almost every review. “For the first couple of days of listening to the Manhattan II, after replacing the Brooklyn in my desktop system, I did not think it offered much sonic advantage, but then, after the unit had warmed up completely, I began to hear subtle but pervasive improvements in low-level decipherability and greater dynamic energy. Burn-in? Maybe.” Psychosis? Maybe. Mytek Digital Manhattan 11 DAC $5995 (without options) Jan 19 - The Absolute Sound If I had to guess, his initial suspicion was probably correct.
Just read through the Music Direct catalog. They do a good job of pulling out the best quotes and adding their own absurdities. I am particularly fond of their quotes used to advertise speaker wire elevators.
Srajan (6Moons) is among my favorite uber-verbose reviewers. I honestly find him quite entertaining but sometimes he simply outdoes himself. Check out the 5th paragraph down ("With its transconductance amp of mega bandwidth ...") from a copper cable review: https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/blackcat2/3/ Priceless.
While I get what they're talking about, I still wonder about reviews where the primary benefit is said to be 'air and transparency'.
Here's the thing, though. Look at the PS Audio pictures of the M700s and they're stacked. At RMAF, PS Audio had the M700s they were using stacked. I even asked McGowan if it made a difference whether they were stacked or not, and he said it doesn't.
No magazine or website, just years of sticking my fingers into live amplifiers and flashing screwdrivers over big power supply capacitors.
That reads like someone fed a bunch of other crappy reviews into a mediocre AI, and then asked the AI to write a review of its own.
Aren’t all reviews (other than very matter-of-fact Consumers Reports reviews), to some extent, an editorial on the part of the writer, and a leap of faith for the reader? All you need to know about listening is bending the top of your ear slightly with your finger. Notice how highs appear and diminish as you move it? That is what you are dealing with - one person hears lots of highs, another does not - just by how their cartilage grew. Forget about age, hearing, etc...it all goes downhill from there. That’s why I like writers that try to frame their respective views against good references. I can then take their views of what they are hearing and (with any luck) apply them against my setup.
