It’s not a matter of whether I agree with a review or not. The problem is that the reviews aren’t honest. For example, go to any hi-fi review site. You can always tell if a piece of gear is good at imaging or not if the reviewer mentions it. If the reviewer praises imaging it’s probably good at imaging but if he doesn’t mention imaging at all it’s probably bad at it. This is lying by omission and a tactic which seems heavily deployed against low-budget audiophiles.
Furthermore, I constantly see this phenomena of budget audiophiles becoming emotionally attached to budget gear, as if they found an amazing value club allowing them hang out with the big-dollar crowd. In reality they’ve just been marketed to successfully by cost-cutting manufacturers. This marketing scam is facilitated by the review sites which do nothing but feed into peoples’ confirmation bias. The reviewers should be telling these buyers what they are actually getting into honestly. No, there isn’t a free lunch club. There are some legitimate better-than-standard value manufacturers out there but they get swamped by the cost-cut marketing scheme, and these reviewers are complicit in this.
For example, take PS Audio. They make great gear. But they also market class D junk to budget-minded audiophiles. You will search in vain for any review which points out the drawbacks of class D, and often you’ll see lying about how PS Audio defeated those problems if mentioned at all.
