Honesty of the Reviewers

It would appear that the role of the reviewer is as tricky as it ever was.

Either you blatantly lie and shill on the behalf of familiar dealers and manufacturers to curry favour or you risk being outcast into the wilderness.

Treading the middle ground between seller and buyer seems to be as difficult as it ever was.

The approach adopted by the likes of ASR bypasses these issues but only because of the goodwill of the members who freely send in products to be reviewed by Amir.

Just a few days ago I watched a YouTube video by the cheapaudioman in which he describes what sometimes happens if he gives a bad review.

I checked back today in the community section and found the livestream video had now been made private.

I'm guessing that someone at iFi audio wasn't too pleased with the video...

@grislybutter

Andrew Robinson?

That’s a little disappointing as I thought he was one of the more honest ones.

I remember a while back he did some videos on his struggles with audiophile addiction. Andrew Robinson is not only very experienced reviewer, he also seems to be one of the more open and candid ones out there.

He even goes as far as to suggest taking all reviews, including his own, as primarily entertainment value only.

@rok2id

the final arbiter of fidelity is the listener.

The listener is the final arbiter of the decision to buy or not.

Fidelity can be measured.

Fidelity being identified as the degree to which the signal is faithful to the original signal.

Beautifully spelt out.

I hope Miller appreciates that things have changed somewhat since his last tenure here.

If any of you Audiophiles really desired honesty in reviews / reviewers, you would not have destroyed Julian Hirsch and Stereo Review.

All it takes to be a reviewer these days is to ask, what is the MSRP? The higher the MSRP, the mo’ better it must be. Also, knowing a few nonsensical words to describe things helps.

My favorite, "it’s a nice well rounded amplifier, but it’s not built for anger." (what hifi)

I’m not familiar with either Julian Hirsch or Gordon J Holt but their stories seem to match with what happened in UK reviewing.

It basically went from information to entertainment.

You only need to look at YouTube to see which is more popular.

I’m definitely old school in this regard and Hirsch sounds like the one I’d put my confidence in.

@grislybutter

I wholeheartedly agree with you in regard to reviews. They are merely entertainment, and often not even that.

The funny thing about these youtubers is how much they talk about themselves.

Since the days of Milton Erickson his work in hypnosis has been increasingly used as a sales technique.

I guess some of these reviewers believe they actually have a personality. There were quite a few DJs I recall who had similar issues.

[Ericksonian hypnosis is based on 3 principles –

To help someone, you have to empathise with the person and establish a connection (we now call this ‘rapport building’). Otherwise, the person would not trust you have the intention or the ability to help them.

To access the unconscious mind, you have to distract the conscious. He achieved this using a variety of techniques.

Indirect suggestions have a greater likelihood of being accepted by the unconscious and helping the person make natural, sustainable changes.]

@rok2id

Well there certainly was something romantic about analogue tape.

With 2 inch tape at a decent speed the results have probably never been surpassed.

Even in this age of digital recording some studios still use tape for the odd recording. This is despite its issues of tracking, maintenance, wear and tear etc.

Perhaps not everyone is convinced by the effectiveness of all the various so-called analogue sounding digital plug-ins?

Perhaps that’s what the history of audio is really teaching us, perhaps what the reviewers should be saying is that things are changing constantly, but not always for the better.