Audio reviews: too many analogies, never simple, but most of all, never clear.
How many reviews have you read were it takes at least 2 paragraphs for the the reviewer to actually give hint this article is actually audio related or even gives mention to what he or she’s reviewing. Get to the subject matter. Leave out your less than perfect dramatic writing skills and lets start hearing about the actual review. I’d rather hear about comparisons between audio components than analogies between wine and taste related to transparency and how that gives rise to what they are getting ready say. What does wine have to do with audio transparency, nothing! Also they have a tendency to talk more about recordings that I’m sure 99% of the readers of the article have never heard of, or would ever listen to. And when you looking for some sign of what they actually think of the components they’re reviewing they never give you a straight answer; it’s always something that leaves, at least for myself, asking, well where’s the answer.
Interesting comments - at lest some of them. I always liked Fremers' reviews. Always felt he reported what he heard, explained what he heard very well, and was honest. After meeting him many years ago and hearing his system, then I felt I understood what he wrote much better as I could now hear what he was hearing. Plus he is a very good person.
Doubt the Pulitzer or the “ Noble “ will go to anyone who is unable to construct a cogent and complete sentence, even with the magic Hurricane steering Sharpie. Same thought applies to his followers.
@teajay was that sax unamplified or run thru the PA ? Spending time on the road and in the studio, I would only very very rarely use the same microphone....
I do appreciate the structure and thought that goes into your reviews
This is so sad, none of you know what a good audio review should be.
I good review should be like fresh hummus on an everything bagel, like the sand you discover in your shoes after vacation. Like the ex-girlfriend who shows up and gives you pets you didn't ask for. Now you know how to tell the difference.
Where to start! I was part owner of 3 stereo salons from 1970 to 2008. This teajay guy is absolutely correct. Much stuff back at the start was really god awful. All of it was hyped in periodical reviews but the bar then was not too high. Now , we have a different world. One that states that is perfectly ok to have to spend 20k for speakers, 35K for electronics, 10 K for cabling, 6k for conditioning, 5k for a stylus and if this is all you have to do with your money, more power to ya. Truth of the matter is what you spend 5k on today, rivals what cost 40k of yesteryear as far as clarity, timbre, emotion and all the rest as it pertains to reproduction.
As far as audio equipment reviews, that’s like someone telling you what wine tastes best. Do you really think it pertinent for someone to tell you what should taste good to you?
Stereo stuff is absolutely no different. Taste, taste, taste of the reviewer is the most important aspect of the review and NOT the equipment.
There are people who like Chef Boyrdee better than home made spaghetti and sauce. Imagine if such a person wrote food reviews. Imagine the same thing about audio reviews. Without knowing the whys of the reviewer's likes and preferences , most reviews become dead worthless.
yep, sometimes I get to the end of a review and wonder if he/she liked it or not. Australian Hi-Fi magazine continues to be a good informative read. A nice balance of technical, listening and lab measurements. Descriptions of their listening rooms and other equipment used to evaluate are always included along with the type or style of music listened to.At the end of the review they always have a few dot points of what they thought was great and also a few not so greats. My only bugbear is that they don't focus enough on sub $2000 gear and in that, they are not alone. That Jules Coleman review of the Sonus Faber speakers is just ridiculous! Thanks for alerting me to someone to avoid.
that's fine. Plenty are. It is a bit low in hindsight, I was going to put sub $5000 but who am I to judge? I would wager that there are more interested in that price point than say $20,000 and up. To each his own.
This is a great thread for me! Lots of good info in here for me to take to the next time I do a review. Thank You!
I posted my first review a few days ago after working on the written portion for 2 weeks. Its actually much harder than I thought. It started out with too much fluff, silly analogies and stupid jokes. I continually whittled it down and did my best to just get to the point. Editing it was another difficult task.
After working on it for days to try to make it perfect, I decided to go ahead and post it. Of course I start off with a misspelling right in the title; Daaaang it!!! Then I also of course forget to post my link to pictures and description of associated equipment; Double Daaaang it!! I did post a link to the written review as well as a link to pictures in the Speakers section but....
Oh well, theres always next time to do better. In my defense, I snapped my tibia and fibula clean through, last week, a la Anderson Silva and am hopped up on oxy 🥵
Unfortunately the state of HiFi reviewing (and other hobbyist reviews) is corrupt. Too many competing agendas, too much manipulation, bribes and so on. I began to take offense when too many political views were included in audio component reviews. I sent a few letters into publications asking a simple question: How do the political views of the reviewer improve my understanding of the quality of the component under review ? You can substitute aesthetic/dining/travel etc preferences for "political views". Some editors did not respond, the rest responded with basically the same answer: "free speech" . No one gave a direct answer. Oh Well.
I have read audio publications for a long time. I like some reviewers and tolerate others. My experience is to read reviews over time to understand the preferences (biases ?) of the reviewer. A gross example would be a tube and vinyl friendly reviewer now addressing a class D amp driven by digital streaming. Will the resulting review be accurate and does the reviewer have enough experience to determine the absolute quality of the components under review ? Reading the review in the abstract you would not know, but if you are familiar with the reviewer and their style then you can easily pull relevant information and leave the filler behind.
Several comments referenced 6Moons. Well they are potentially among the worst offenders. 1) the owner is on record as stating that unless a component blows up in testing, or has completely incomprehensible ergonomics, it will not receive a negative review. 2) unless the reviewer is an audio designer/engineer, or has demonstrated professional expertise in the area of design under review, then the reviewer is not qualified to give a negative review 3) the power of the press is substantial. A negative review can put a company out of business thus he (the owner of 6m) does not want to be responsible for ending someone's business- hence a negative review will not be published 4) they are pay to play: want a review- buy an ad on the site. ALL of the above can be confirmed through web search. Hey- at least they are honest !
Reviewers' personal lives, morality and principles by which they conduct their life and reviewing, work habits in conjunction with communication with manufacturers, dealers and other industry members, writing style, etc. all vary from person to person.
Imo, it is disingenuous, or ignorant, to paint all reviewers with such a broad brush as, "they all get paid," and "they get free gear given to them after the review," or similar. It is on the level of bikers at a bar talking about surgeons, as if they know what it is like to be a surgeon. I also held some of the biases and disrespect of reviewers prior to becoming one. It certainly has been eye-opening in several respects. The stories I could tell! Such assertions have been addressed before by myself and others; the print magazines have put out articles on the reviewing process. Nevertheless, we have constant regurgitation of misnomers and slanderous accusations.
I certainly will not speak for other reviewers, but here are some facts about my activities: I have put in 1,000+ hours related to reviewing (communication with industry members, shipping receiving and sending, system setup, listening note taking, writing and editing - I thoroughly edit all my articles prior to submission, such that normally there is little if any editing done to the article by the Editor), all unpaid. I have spent the equivalent of many of your systems' cost out of pocket to attend shows, then written unpaid show reports. I have never harbored gear after the review if the manufacturer wishes it to be returned. I have requested longer term loan of some pieces that are used ongoing in reviews, but I never consider them to become mine with time. I contact manufacturers over the years to thank them for continued use of any gear/cables, and remind them that I do not consider it to have become mine.
As regards reviewing style, it takes more work to make an article that is informative and entertaining. We are not all going to agree on the proportion of each in a review that satisfies. If you don't like the reviewer, don't read them. I am more wordy than most, but I also put in excessive time to develop owner added insights that will enhance the ownership of the product. That is not required in reviewing, but I do so as a favor to the community.
Now, regarding being unpaid and putting in enough time to make it a part time job; I'm no idiot. I gain benefits for my writing skills being honed through reviewing and have potential for industry accommodation if I purchase. I also have purchased many pieces of gear - I am buying one this week, as the manufacturer requested it to be returned, but I will possibly need it in the future as systems are reconfigured so much (it's an integrated amp with flexibility. I also am blessed to have a rotating selection of gear moving through my room.
As far as ripping on reviewers as having a thing for the gear, SO WHAT? That's thinly veiled arrogance, as though it's a problem to love the gear and build systems. I am a System Builder, I love the gear as much as the music, and NO ONE can tell me I do audiophilia wrong. I build lots of systems and I do more reviews than most; I enjoy it and look for the adventure of discovery of system sound.
I want ZERO participation in the industry politics, and I have ZERO involvement with the management and money of the magazine. That is true for most reviewers. I don't give a rip what other magazines do, and what other reviewers do, but there is no payola in my life. I attempt to maintain very high principles in my reviewing activity. So, I would appreciate it if the blanket statements were qualified, at least allowing for the potential for principled reviewers.
There is no other reviewer with such a set of criteria. Every one is unique, as should be expected. I offered this as an example of what I believe are many decent people involved with reviewing who do not deserve to be maligned. If you think they don't know what they are doing in describing gear, you don't know much about system building, or reviewing.
Finally, thank you to those who have read my work and responded with encouraging comments. It gives me great satisfaction when my work is parlayed into a benefit for the audiophile. :)
If your comment was directed at me: Items 1,2,3 are directly from posts by the owner of 6m, in the Audio Asylum forum. Item 4 is from a post by the owner of 6m in several web sites.
If not directed at me, then I took to narrow a view of your post and I apologize.
Got links? Or maybe quotes. I like to see things first hand. Those statements by 6M dude seem a little preposterous. On the other hand he can run his company any way he wants to.
Regarding 6 Moons, if the manufacturer does not advertise on their site, then the manufacturer has to pay 6 Moons for a review of said equipment. I find that to be very distasteful and do not trust that site for that reason. I also don’t want 5 paragraphs in the review telling me it was a sunny day with the sun glistening on the Eiffel Tower or other such nonsense. The only thing I do like about 6 Moons are the pictures of the interior of the amps, speakers etc. That is Audio porn of the highest quality. So I pretty much look at the pictures and now ignore their reviews.
I don't always have any interest in whatever maunderings the reviewer indulges in (like the late Mr. Dudley and those frickin' bunnies), but reviewing audio must be a fairly dry pursuit and saying the same things over and over a mind numbing activity, so I endure the prologues and check them for any interest level on my part, then ignoring the ones that don't do it for me.
Easy to skip to the conclusion page and see what the outcome is.
And to the OP who said "
What does wine have to do with audio transparency, nothing!" - I have found after very extensive personal investigation that sufficient wine may result in a very significant deterioration in the level of audio transparency perceived by the listener! ;-)
I’m pretty sure all audio reviewers and audio e magazines have to have some motivation to review things and write and publish reviews. These guys aren’t independently wealthy, you know. Well, actually some of them are.
Miller Carbon Thank you for your initial post on this topic. I thought perhaps I was the only one that skipped trashy paragraphs in a review and fast forward to the listening tests. I also bypass the reviewers musical choices used in testing. Any comparisons to related equipment is welcome so are the conclusions References to "Orange Man" (always negative) tells me something about the reviewer.
I agree that audio reviews can be frustratingly long-winded these days, but I love it when a reviewer uses analogies from outside the audio world to better describe what he/she is hearing. I want the review to be subjective. Bring on those food and wine comparoes! On the other hand, yeah, I appreciate it when reviewers engage in musical chairs as they substitute other components in the chain as they attempt to describe what the component under review brings to the table. But you don't have to cross every "i" and dot every "t." My poor eyes begin to blur.
Too broad a brush here--you learn who to trust and what is fluff. Reputable reviewers like Fremer (& Dudley!!) can say what they want for as long as they want before getting down to business--i can always fast forward to conclusioin and Atkinson
1-Any professional reviews are, by definition, ones that have no manufacturer or publisher pressure to like the product ( in exchange for buying it cheaply etc) and/or don’t sugarcoat any problems with it. In a professionally run publication, the mere existence of advertising doesn’t alter this at all. A quick example being in my newspaper reporter days, due to the large amount of advertising bought by the local auto dealers, any article written criticizing them or their products would likely never run. This clearly was a breach of the trust the community had in the paper.
2-Further, the lack of reviews for a brand may not be what they seem - ie they don’t advertise so they don’t get covered - the truth is that if a brand doesn’t provide review samples, the only alternative is to have reviews written by those who’ve liked the product enough to buy it - hardly an objective source of criticism.
3-That said, there are publishers and reviewers that enjoy being in a position to get equipment cheaply, or even free, and are subsequently less than objective in their reviews. There are also reviewers that fancy themselves to be more like Hemingway than necessary, wasting, as the OP said, time and review space. The late Art Dudley was generally good at mixing just the right amount of storytelling with his opinions, creating very entertaining reviews imho. Others don’t do it as well.
Any publisher/editor worthy of the title should solicit reader opinions and act accordingly when his (or her) readers point out that the reviews aren’t providing enough (or any) pertinent information. We aren’t buying the magazines just to see the ads.
There are a lot of things that most reviewers miss when evaluating a component. Most critical are how components interact with others down and up stream. Also I find it totally ridiculous when a reviewer gives a component a bad review based on only one set of components used within the review. Reviewers should have at a minimum, at least one other system to evaluate the same component to see if there was a miss-match between components that caused them to reach a negative opinion for that component. Where the numbers ( specs ) do mean something is the interaction between components of different impedances and design principles.
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