"Why no bad reviews?" -- Twittering Lavorgna

I still remember "review" of $10,000 AudioQuest internet cord (was long )) ) on his AudioStream site, connecting streamer to $20 old Netgear switch... It caused internet uproar, he became a butt of jokes and it led to his demise. And who can forget glowing reviews of every gizmo in existence by some guy on his site )). I cannot take this dude seriously, sorry.

 

Every publisher, every editor, every reporter in every category of news and information publishing has choices to make and balancing acts to perform between competing financial and editorial concerns. And every news and information source users encounter impact their impression of "the media" as a whole, positively or negatively. People in the general public seem to absorb the whole universe of news and publishing in a fairly undifferentiated way. Obviously you can choose which way you want to balance those competing concerns.

 

I've changed my mind. When I grow up I've decided I want to go into law enforcement. It has to be a more loved position than being an audio reviewer!

How will I tell my Mom though...

CJ

 

Agreed that if a reviewer brings into account other components and compares them to the piece under review and stipulates how this piece under review fails in comparison, that is useful. However, there are many 'rave' reviews that fail to do this, and also heap hyperbole on the review subject, only to get 'revised' by the same reviewer at a later time with a just discovered 'issue' that apparently was not there at the onset! Are we now to believe that the reviewer had no way of hearing these 'issues' from the onset?

 

Part 3:

 

Quite often.

You need to remember that many times you don't necessarily know when a component is doing something wrong until you hear another that does it right. For example, many early CD players' filters added a metallic ring to the sound that wasn't necessarily immediately noticeable until CD players came along with filters that did not ring.

Likewise one component may roll off highs in certain instances in a way that's not apparent until you hear a component that does not, or perhaps you are exposed to a master tape that reveals what it a particular recording should have sounded like all along.

 

I don't agree with this. If one has a passing knowledge of what the sound of 'live' acoustic un-amplified instruments sounds like, then to hear where the discrepancies lie is fairly easy. There really are no electronics or speakers that can reproduce the exact sound of the 'live' in our homes IMHO, the best we can hope for is a decent facsimile of the 'real'. So, if one has the ability to hear a lot of 'live' music, then i think when a component is doing something wrong becomes a lot easier to determine. ( The question is how much the reviewer is exposed to 'live' music?).

 

If you're going for "live" - I dispute that we are going for the sound of "live."

What is the sound of "live" Daft Punk when the sounds on the record were never actually sound at any point as many of the instruments were directly captures into the digital recorder and were never heard as sound until the Pro Tools file was played back?

The same is true for much EDM.

What about albums made today where every member of the band sent in their stems recorded at home? What's "live" there?

For much music today "live" is listening to amplifiers and large flown Clair Brothers live arrays driven by racks and racks of Crown amps. That's not the sound I want to hear in my room.

Even for unamplified instruments, studio technique comes into play. I want to hear Phil Collins' drums with their reverse gated mics, not with the resonance you'd hear if he was playing the drums in a studio without a mic.

So no, there is no obvious discrepancy to be heard. Even a piano sounds different depending upon how it is mic'ed, and often the sound of a piano in a particular space is not at all what I am hoping to hear from my system at home.

That having been said, all you do need to do if you want that is listen to even a solo piano live, and you know that today's highest end multi-million dollar systems are complete garbage comparatively, they don't even come close.

 

I guess that what you have to bear in mind is that Lavorgna was not initially just the fan-blogger that you suggest -- he was employed by the publishing group for Stereophile and had his own site under that umbrella like Tyll had (?AudioStream, or something). He was, however, given the push for unprofessional behaviour and now touts his take through his 'Twittering' site. It's not a question of "don't like it, don't read it", it's a matter of keeping awareness of the bad apples in the business current. As a journalist, you don't want people to forget about Jayson Blair and those like him, do you?

 

Absolutely, and I used to play a game with it in my slack-time where I would read the 'reviews' of its Principal (Sgt. Ebay, or whatever his name is) just to confirm that he always said the word "gestalt" at least once in every review in describing the sound of a component.

The pile of loudness-compressed CDs he uses to review (he only listens to CD) is also a hoot too...

 

A major point is being missed here. In your defense of the right of these entities not to publish critical reviews you omit to consider that this is often the only way that people without dealers can get a handle on how something performs.

If everything gets a positive and You buy something that should have been reviewed critically, then you would wish that that negative review had been there for you to read...

 

A bad review puts too much power in the reviewer's hands. One bad review on a product could cause serious financial hardship for some companies.

I have a close friend who is a restaurant critic. He never gives a bad review because he understands that it would doom the restaurant. He says that the lessons learned from not receiving a review from an invitation is about as serious a wake-up call as you can get. "You need to do better, but I'm not going to sink you because of it."

 

Praised by every reviewer known to mankind but these guys aren't falling for it:

 

For those that care here is the info from Lavorgna's website and yes, he does listen to vinyl, not exclusively to CD (as if that matters much either way).
About Twittering Machines - Twittering Machines

 

The are not falling for it because they cannot sell it. Moreover the Burchard direct sales distribution model is destined to put brick and mortar stores, like this one, out of business. Also the speaker was compared to a Sonus Faber speaker (a floor-standing model in fact) which is a brand known to be euphonically colored.

 

Lol, not the ones I've owned.

 

He says that reviewers having no loyalty to manufacturers is a bad thing. I disagree. If something sounds better and print reviewers don't say so due to loyalty, that is a problem.
But I do agree that long term "loans" of equipment is a problem.

 

Twittering Lavorgna, my favorite 80's/90's Goth Dance Rock band.

 

There's very few bad reviews on the internet because if you publish one you instantly become the worst enemy of and the target of hate by whoever owns the reviewed item, and they are ready to start a revolution to put on fire the premises of the bastard who dared to express a bad opinion about their beloved gear, which is the best sounding deal on the planet.

 

I look as the reviews being PR for the manufacturer. That way, I don't get a nasty surprise.

 

Finally someone that has a grasp of the situation.

 

I heard the debut of these at AXPONA 2019 and their comments mirrored my own from back then. A very dull, recessed sound as done in the voicing of the speaker.
The bass was impressive given the passive radiator but that is about it. Given the hype they were a complete disappointment.