Example of a piece o’ crap, useless review

"Transfer functions" of various cartridges, tonearms, etc?  Please define.

Reviewers almost never give an actual bad review 

I somewhat agree, however it is common for reviewers to pick and choose which products to evaluate, often these products are at least average or above- that’s a major reason why fewer negative reviews. The companies chosen are somewhat established so have likely learned lessons on what sells in their market segment.

I wholeheartedly agree @soix  with the “usefulness” or lack thereof some of these reviews.  Comparative analysis to similar products and the reviewer’s audio chain helps us to determine “value” of the product, without such comparisons we have no reference other than if the reviewer subjectively liked the product or not which is useless.  

Often, we have to read between the lines to derive a value judgement.  For instance, in HiFi+ review of the Siltech Classic cables here, the reviewer seemed surprised “…first note on the page was “Why haven’t I used Siltech Cables more often?”  and “net an extremely neutral and exceptionally detailed cable series. The ‘nothing’ part is just how good that sounds beyond that.”   I purchased a few  of these IC as I wanted neutral uneditorizing cables and the price seemed fair and within budget.

Reviewers almost never give an actual bad review because they know if they do that, manufacturers will stop lending gear for evaluation.

@roadcykler Actually that was not my experience. Over 17 years I only wrote one negative review, and I was not opposed to writing more if warranted. The thing is, for a product to make it to the level of getting a review among the thousands of products out there it needs to have some positive and usually even some special buzz about it. So almost every component that gets reviewed has been well vetted by many users and others so bad sounding equipment just never tends to even get reviewed. In short, the system self selects very good sounding gear right from the start. Also, the major manufacturers know what they’re doing, and it’s almost non existent that something they’d release to the public sounds bad. So this is really why you rarely read a bad review.

That said, that’s where the “art” of reading between the lines in reviews becomes important. Unlike the crappy “review” I mentioned in this thread, most good reviews will include a paragraph or two near the end just before the conclusion (that’s where I always put it) where a reviewer will elaborate on any shortcomings/limitations or qualities that he may have alluded to during the review that seem a bit off or things the reader may want to hone in on while listening or comparing to other equipment. THIS IS CRITICAL INFO SO READ IT CAREFULLY! So, while the product overall may be very good, these would be the potential “negatives” that the reviewer feels are important to highlight but they’re not nearly enough to trash the product and throw the baby out with the bath water. This again is why product comparisons are so important because these potentially aberrant qualities can be analyzed on a relative basis versus another known product and provide a very useful perspective on any potential issues. Also, reviewers aren’t all-knowing oracles and what we may think is a shortcoming for our system/tastes may well not be the case for many other potential customers, so better to just point out what we heard objectively and let the reader decide if that’s something they’d still like to explore further. Last, most audio manufacturers are not rich and do what they do for the love of it and many others might be relatively new, and a bad review could literally sink a company. Now, if the product outright sucks so be it although it’s highly unlikely that product would’ve made it to review anyway as mentioned above, but if a product isn’t perfect yet shows some promise as a reviewer you’ve gotta weigh the extent of the shortcomings and if they’re bad enough to potentially put the company out of business. So there are many things to consider as a reviewer. I wasn’t on the business end so can’t speak to manufacturers threatening to not send any more gear if they get a bad review, but I never heard of anything like that although it may happen. Anyway, I hope this sheds a little light on why there are so few negative reviews. It’s really not a conspiracy in my experience.

All reviews in TAS are commercials so they can't be true at all

@roadcykler

It is in no one’s best interest to review a bad product. No one. You can be sure a company making terrible sounding gear is not going to be submitting it for review and no reviewer is likely to choose it..

@soix +1

Reading reviews as I have for nearly fifty years I can easily detect a mediocre product… you know… dammed by faint praise.

it is definitely true that there is more content with less depth that has happened over the last ten years over TAS. But there is way more value then midfi and consumer electronics reviews.