Jjss49 I have to write replies on my phone as it is easier to finger type as I h ad a stroke which was mentioned previously
For some reason the phone auto corrects and for some strange reason it is not in English all the time so the word was misspelled Sorry.
dave, no apology needed for mis-spelling, my smart-alek post wasn’t picking on that - i empathize re your struggles post-stroke, and wish you all the best on regaining good health
my point was just to reinforce what i posted on earlier, about reviewers and what incentivizes them, and how difficult it is to be entirely objective and not become co-opted by commercial advantages the role affords... be it accommodation pricing, long-term or permanent ’loans’ of gear, and so on...
my hope is also that you as a forum member will focus on mainly providing useful new info for the benefit of the end users who come here to become informed, and keep the frontal selling tactics to a minimum
With the 432 EVO Aeon review, as Lalin pointed out, I do have a Baetis server that’s active in my system and I use a lot and, of course, compared to the Belgium product. But how many readers have had experience with that one?
Now it turns into this…
Actually, I wasn’t able to complete the head-to-head comparison of Baetis to 432 EVO that I’d hoped to. The Aeon has only a USB output; the Baetis has USB, AES/EBU, SPDIF, and HDMI. The USB interface is an upgrade, employing an SOtM card and in mid-review, it stopped working. I’d developed an impression that the Aeon at least held its own against the Baetis but I couldn’t do the additional comparisons I wanted to…The Baetis became irrelevant, in terms of this review, and thus wasn’t even mentioned as "associated equipment."
Please stop. You’re just twisting your excuses in knots to try to explain your inexplicable behavior, and I’m being kind here. First it was the standard TAS “not everybody owns the other product” excuse, now it’s the I didn’t have the proper connection to do a valid comparison excuse. That crap don’t fly here man, and every seasoned audiophile here will see right through it for exactly what or is, so again I say just cut your losses and stop throwing out these BS rationales or this will get nothing but worse for you as others start to chime in because the truth is plain to see here. I don’t like pressing you at all here man, but I also won’t let BS pass as I always expect to get called out on my statements whether here or in professional reviews and I accept that accountability as part of the terrain. I recommend you do the same, and I really hope you and your colleagues at TAS embrace doing more comparisons in the future because I think you could offer so much more to potential audio buyers than you do now.
Actually, I wasn’t able to complete the head-to-head comparison of Baetis to 432 EVO that I’d hoped to. The Aeon has only a USB output; the Baetis has USB, AES/EBU, SPDIF, and HDMI. The USB interface is an upgrade, employing an SOtM card and in mid-review, it stopped working. I’d developed an impression that the Aeon at least held its own against the Baetis but I couldn’t do the additional comparisons I wanted to – the USB output is the best-sounding one on the Baetis machine, and I didn’t think it fair to make comparisons with another. The Baetis became irrelevant, in terms of this review, and thus wasn’t even mentioned as "associated equipment."
That said—and acknowledging that, in part due to this exchange, I’ll be trying to add specific comparisons to future reviews—I stick by my guns regarding the importance of referencing the absolute sound and of using the descriptive language of our hobby to delineate what I’m hearing. If you don’t find that approach helpful, soix, no problem. But many people do.
@aquint Not really, if you’re honest and deal in facts. Otherwise, yeah you’ll find this a little rough especially if you’re not accustomed to being held accountable for what you say. Speaking of which, still waiting, as per my prior post, for you to point out where specifically you compared the 432 with the Baetis in the review as you said you did. Also, if you could explain why you didn’t even include the Baetis in your list of associated equipment in the review that would be very enlightening.
<<Getting back to the subject at hand. Has anyone who actually spends their hard earned money heard this piece of equipment? I'd love to get an impression from a user that plunked down $7500 to see if they feel satisfied with their purchase>>
this stuff really gets you riled up doesn’t it? While I appreciate your concern for us, the solution is don’t read his posts, don’t reply to them. You would be surprised how much that would eliminate the problem of lengthy threads about misbehaving dealers and bring you and others much peace of mind.
@tomcy6I see my post went completely over your head — guess you’re more of a visual learner. I’m far from the only one here who has issues with audiotroy’s behavior on this site because we see the danger to the site’s integrity if more like him are allowed come along. Anyway, fortunately for us you’re not a moderator here and hopefully audiotroy will continue to be a one-off outlier here. Maybe someone here will make a video showing some of their prior posts so maybe you’ll finally be able to understand the brewing cancer they are on this site.
@soix, this stuff really gets you riled up doesn't it? While I appreciate your concern for us, the solution is don't read his posts, don't reply to them. You would be surprised how much that would eliminate the problem of lengthy threads about misbehaving dealers and bring you and others much peace of mind.
Personally, I don't think that Dave is going to trap anyone into buying something they don't want.. As long as he discloses that he is a dealer for the product he is recommending I think he's within bounds.. His 14 day unconditional return policy on the 432 EVO is something I would like to see other dealers offer more often.
I don't think there are many threads on Audiogon where someone asks what do people think of this product, and he immediately gets numerous responses saying forget that product, buy this one. It's so common I would be surprised if I read a thread where it didn't happen.
I would read more of Audio Troy if he could put two sentences together without a misspelling or typo. In this case the thread title is not only sensationalistic but also messed up. Is it vision problem, ADD, reliance on voice recognition, drugs, or other?
I don’t have a problem with posts by dealers in general or Dave Lalin in particular. If I go into a dealer’s store I expect him to try to sell me the gear he sells.
Except this isn’t his store you’re walking into, it’s a forum for people to share their advice and opinions. As stated before, several other dealers/manufacturers post here without issue because they provide information and, unlike audiotroy, don’t promote their products as being better than others or claiming the other recommendations made members here are inferior to the product he sells. THAT’S the problem and what other vendors here DO NOT do. See the difference?
Just keep in mind that the posters here who are not involved in the audio industry except as users of the products are even less objective than those who work in the industry. They have less experience with a variety of audio products, have a lower level of listening skills and their tastes in audio gear and music are all over the map and we have no idea where those tastes are on the map. There are exceptions, of course, and you can have a conversation that provides useful information about a product you’re interested in.
People write rave reviews here for gear that I have sold because I didn’t like it or just found something better. There are all kinds of people raving about gear that has to be the best because they own it. There are unofficial clubs, think Vandersteen or Magnepan, where the members think there is no question their brand is the best, and for those people that may be true, but not necessarily for everyone.
I don’t have a problem with posts by dealers in general or Dave Lalin in particular. If I go into a dealer’s store I expect him to try to sell me the gear he sells. I would fall over if he told me, You know, the guy across town sells what you need. It’s much better for you than the stuff we’re selling.
If I find that I don’t like the posts of a particular contributor, I don’t read them, and I take all posts with a huge grain of salt.
It's nice that some users care so much about this forum and seek to improve it, but the fact is that what they or I think about it doesn't matter. What matters is what the moderators have decided. They're the ones to contact for those who seek change.
Like it or not, the content you see on this site generally has the moderators' blessings. Posts that are violations are subject to deletion and serial or especially offensive violators have been banned. That's just how it works.
jjs49 I completely agree with you. Retailers and manufacturers should not use this forum to sell their wares. It is OK to raise awareness and be helpful in sharing information or knowledge, but we can all see when lines are crossed into territory where their self interest in selling is blatant and tiresome. This discussion forum would be overrun with every other post being to sell stuff if all industry people here did what these guys do.
Getting back to the subject at hand. Has anyone who actually spends their hard earned money heard this piece of equipment? I'd love to get an impression from a user that plunked down $7500 to see if they feel satisfied with their purchase.
my take, just one person’s opinion, a person who likes this place...
@audiotroy is an aggressive, vocal seller here in this forum, jumps in and sells on numerous user threads... and though they disclose who/what they are when they post, in my opinion, what they do here is NOT OK -- let’s take it to an extreme... someone posts a question here on how to make a set of vandy 2ce’s work in their room... then seven retailers jump in, say ’hey man, ditch those lame-ass speakers, i sell these great xxx-yyy-zzz, greatest thing since quad esl’s, they will embarrass your crappy old vandy’s’ -- see the problem that arises? .... there is good reason why in the good ol’ days (not that long ago actually), when industry folks did this ho-ing here on the users forum they were quickly told to stop it... in my view, we shouldn’t lower our standards to where this behavior is accepted ... just cuz they say they are sellers doesn’t make it ok that they pollute the discussion threads repeatedly
as for TAS and how/what they write in reviews ... we should still read these, as any published info, even if colored by commercial incentives, can be indeed useful info -- but we should just understand how this industry works, it has been this way for decades since stereophile and tas and many others have gotten popular and become ’brands’ of their own as industry publications aimed at the consumer ... they are advertising driven, that is their bread and butter, we the end users are the targets of the advertising... it is a mutually beneficial eco system where reviews are used to support advertising, in turn to sell gear to end users, usually through retailers online or physical... published reviews, even relatively weak, low-accountability ones without comparisons like those in TAS, are real work to do, and these people gotta eat, be paid for their work, so it is just how the game is played... tas needs to survive financially like any other publication and its not easy ... we as subscribers pay almost nothing to read it... in my view, there is no fault in this, we as consumer just need to clearly understand the ’wiring diagram’ and see these reviews for what they are, and not be naive.... once understood, we can understand better why there are so few negative reviews, negativity on any product is stated extremely subtlely, few comparisons are made - it makes the money machinery work ....
this is no different for youtube reviews, asr reviews, part time audiophile reviews -- each has their economic/financial wiring diagram... all try at some level to be honest, have integrity... but there are always degrees of this, life is shades of grey, no clear cut black and white, nobody is pure... we as users just need to be aware of this...
I want to say, I am good with @audiotroy’s comments. Across each one of their posts it says they are a vendor. This is honesty, up front. They have exposure to different brands… they choose to carry some brands and not others… it is hard not to think they carry brands they think sound good.
But for me, the bottom line is they are up front that they are a vendor. So you can decide what that means to you. I get very angry when a vendor does not show that up front… that is disingenuous.
@soix- agree with your points; and yes not a word about the Baetis in any way shape or form. Hifi-Advice on the otherhand does a pretty good job of providing comparison context in reviews
With the 432 EVO Aeon review, as Lalin pointed out, I do have a Baetis server that’s active in my system and I use a lot and, of course, compared to the Belgium product. But how many readers have had experience with that one? I’ve reviewed a couple of other Baetis models, an Aurender, and a T+A but that’s still such a minuscule part of the server universe.
Strange — can you point out the part of the review where you compared it to the Baetis because I don’t see it. And I would’ve found it very helpful to hear your impressions of how the Aurender and T+A pieces compare to the 432 as I suspect most others would too as it adds a significant level of perspective as to how the 432 sounds. And here we go yet again with the ridiculous contention that comparisons aren’t useful unless someone has the component themselves or that you’re not using every product in that segment. Bogus!!! There are other reviews of the comparison products out there where they’re compared to other products, and by hearing these multiple accounts and comparisons it lends a much greater ability to hone in on a product’s true and relative sonic properties with this additional context. If you can’t see this you’re either drinking too much of the TAS kool-aid or engaging in willful ignorance.
Perhaps even stranger still, if the Baetis was in your system and as you say you used it for comparison purposes in the review, why does it not appear in your stated list of associated equipment as you apparently saw fit to list every other piece except the Baetis? Hmmm. How in the world were we supposed to know you were comparing the 432 to the Baetis? ESP? Hidden somewhere in your unique and mythical TAS prose? Face it — the only explanation is you were hiding the Baetis so you couldn’t actually be pinned down on any of your observations or assertions — there is no other defensible explanation here. For reference, here’s the list of associated system equipment with the one curious omission…
For the review period, I used two DACs, a Bricasti Design M1 and the Ideon Absolute Epsilon [seeRH’s full review in this issue]. A Transparent USB Premium cable connected server and DAC. Analog electronics included a Pass Labs XP-22 linestage and Pass XA 60.8 monoblock amplifiers; loudspeakers were either Magico M1s or the TAD E1-TX system [review pending]. Local files were stored on a Synology NAS and reached the Aeon via a Fidelizer Etherstream switch connected to my router.
And I particularly like this little bit…
I do listen to a lot of the same music with each review component, using the vocabulary of high-performance audio to describe the sound to myself and to the magazine’s end user—and that allows me to have an impression of what’s really good and what’s merely OK.
Ah the mystical language that apparently tells all if you have earned the secret decoder ring. It’s great that you can judge for yourself what is great or merely OK, but what about the poor reader? Perhaps you can point to one of your reviews where we can clearly see where a product was “merely OK.” I won’t hold my breath. The point of an audio review magazine is not so YOU can identify areas where or which components are “really good and what’s merely OK” but that the READERS get a sense of that, and this extremely important aspect is where TAS reviews fail miserably and why I (and several other people here) no longer read TAS reviews.
@aquint What your last post once again showed in plain relief was the TAS standard and frankly silly defense of why you don’t do product comparisons along with a stark example of how you actively hide comparable review system components so the reader has no knowledge of your basis for your review assertions and conclusions. As a reviewer and as I’ve said before, the only reasons to conduct reviews in this manner are laziness, the ability to crank out more reviews faster, and/or to avoid any semblance of possible accountability for both yourself or the magazine. I only continue to point out these significant shortcomings because you and TAS at large continue to defend your less-than-rigorous review policies with absurd and thin arguments that most seasoned audiophiles will see right through for the desperate garbage they are. But, and to end on a more positive and hopeful note, the fact that you’re considering doing more comparisons in the future is a huge potential step in the right direction for both the effectiveness and usefulness of your reviews as well as TAS’ overall reputation as a more credible source of truly valuable information.
I accept everything you say except the part about their being an “Absolute Sound”, and that issue is tangential here, imo, and could be the subject of a different thread.
Shortly before Art Dudley died, he reviewed some French CDP that cost around $25K. His comparator was a Sony SACD player that he had since 2003. Now, surely someone at Sterephile could have loaned him something for a weekend that was a more relevant comparator? I appreciate the difficulties that may be involved, but as a reader, such a comparison is meaningless.
I also disagree that there is some type of Universal Audio Language, an Audiophile Esperanto, that can be used successfully to describe products. We all read these terms but overtime they come to mean different things to different listeners, and It doesn’t allow for the possibility that biologically, we tend to hear things in different subtle ways. Trying to describe in words what one is hearing in sounds is undoubtedly a challenge, but I don’t think that having a codification of terms, and expecting the average Audiophile, not to mention the casually interested person who might pick up an issue of TAS at a bookstore, to master them is the solution.
I’m not certain how having one or two comparison products on hand makes everything right, when there are dozens of potential competing products. Chances are that the comparison product I have on hand isn’t going to be the one you’re interested in.
And there it is!!! This is the common excuse used by TAS reviewers to defend not comparing review samples to another product. It’s an utter garbage argument as the comparison product, even if not the one a reader is interested in, is likely reviewed other places against other review products and thus a point of relative reference can begin to be made. Humans are great at determining relative differences between options but not good at judging things on their own — hence the value of product comparisons.
That said, I am going to try to do better on the issue of comparisons. Then, the forum loudmouths can move on to giving other reasons why they no longer read TAS.
Nice. There’s the TAS arrogance in full view. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with TAS reviews, it’s we the readers/loudmouths no longer reading TAS who are clearly making up reasons for no longer reading TAS who are in the wrong. When in doubt, blame the customer! Great business strategy there. It’s much easier to think it’s our problem than to honestly look inward and figure out the real reasons we’re not reading anymore — kinda like it’s easier to write a “review in a bubble” than it is to incorporate meaningful product comparisons. It requires more effort and to embrace accountability rather than make lame excuses and blame others, but there it is.
That’s why the lexicon that HP and others developed can be so helpful. Employed thoughtfully, it can serve as a point of reference that individual product reviews can point to.
Yes, a point of reference in one system and one room, which is in no way comparable to hearing the same piece of equipment in another system in another room much less a completely different piece of equipment in that scenario — way, way too many variables to even begin making a valid or meaningful comparison, which is why comparing components in the same room and system is so valuable and useful to readers.
And @aquint you misinterpreted my use of caps in my prior post — they were made to add emphasis and not made out of anger at all. But HELL YES (ok, this one may be a bit out of anger) I’m angry that TAS eschews doing product comparisons that almost all readers would prefer to have, and I’m angrier still that TAS writers continually try to defend the practice of producing “reviews in a bubble” through very shoddy and BS excuses like the one you used above. As a former reviewer it would’ve made my life a HELLUVA (this one’s for emphasis Andrew in case you’re confused) lot easier if I didn’t have to bother making those pesky product comparisons. I could’ve written twice as many reviews without all the added time/effort involved in doing that, but my reviews wouldn’t have been nearly as valid or useful to readers had I done that. But you go on cranking out your reviews as is and kidding yourself that TAS is above it all and that its flawed review process is the better way to go for readers. I’ll just say that if I’m actually interested in a product and really want to get a good idea of how it sounds, TAS is about the last place I’ll go because after reading a “review in a bubble” I still have very little idea of what the product really sounds like. I can’t think of a worse comment about a product review than that, and it really encapsulates the ultimate problem with TAS and its lax review “standards.” But I applaud you for considering to do more product comparisons in the future, and if more of your fellow writers do the same you’ll likely get me back along with many other readers because TAS does review a lot of very desirable equipment. I honestly have my fingers crossed that this comes to pass.
Good point - though the two situations aren’t entirely analagous. Maybe you remember that, for Fanfare, I reviewed pretty much only Wagner for about a decade and I still have on my shelves roughly 20 complete Ring cycles (not to mention a bunch of single Ring dramas.) If I have more than two pairs of full-range, floorstanding loudspeakers in our place at once, my wife understandably begins to get pretty annoyed. Plus, despite rumors to the contrary, you do have to send them back unless you decide to buy them (in which case you’re probably unloading something else—that’s why I’ve been a long-time AudiogoN member! ) Add to that the possibility of streaming and comparisons of different recorded versions of the same music is pretty easy.
Not so with audio gear. You will notice that, when reviewing speakers I generally try a couple of different amplifiers and sometimes need to borrow one from a friend or dealer to do a fair assessment. With the 432 EVO Aeon review, as Lalin pointed out, I do have a Baetis server that’s active in my system and I use a lot and, of course, compared to the Belgium product. But how many readers have had experience with that one? I’ve reviewed a couple of other Baetis models, an Aurender, and a T+A but that’s still such a minuscule part of the server universe. I do listen to a lot of the same music with each review component, using the vocabulary of high-performance audio to describe the sound to myself and to the magazine’s end user—and that allows me to have an impression of what’s really good and what’s merely OK.
Extended listening to familiar music and describing in detail what I hear (and, yes, there is an "absolute sound" with synthetic studio recordings—you recognize it when you hear them played back on a super-system or at a recording session) with the audiophile jargon lets me get a handle on what a new product can do and where it fits in my experience as an audiophile. My hope is that some readers will find some of my reviews promising enough to seek out the product at a dealer, an audio show, at the local audio club (I do that a lot) or perhaps in a friend’s system. No one, I hope, is going to buy a $15K pair of speakers because some reviewer says they "blow away" the $7500 pair standing in the hallway just off his listening room.
That said, I am going to try to do better on the issue of comparisons. Then, the forum loudmouths can move on to giving other reasons why they no longer read TAS. 😁
Andrew when you or your fellow music reviewers review, say, Wagners Ring, there are usually comparisons to multiple other versions. As readers we have come to take that as a matter of course. So why the attitude about product reviews, that comparison are not your bailiwick? I wouldn’t expect Product X to be compared to every product out there, no more than I would expect a new Beethoven Symphony recording to be compared to the other 200 available versions. However, most recordings are compared to a few others. Why the different standard for gear?
This is the kind of dialogue that needs to happen and I always try to attend to constructive criticism from editors and readers alike. It’s just so much more productive when the correspondent adopts the tone of a Mahler123 as opposed to the enraged contempt of a soix. It’s always a bad sign when someone starts writing in all caps about what’s supposed to be an enjoyable avocation. Both posters are making the same points but one seems to be getting unnecessarily bellicose about it. Like it or not, all of us— knowledgeable consumers, dealers, manufacturers, journalists, recording professionals, even artists—are part of the same ecosystem and—I’ll use the provocative "c-word"—a little civility goes a long way.
I’m not certain how having one or two comparison products on hand makes everything right, when there are dozens of potential competing products. Chances are that the comparison product I have on hand isn’t going to be the one you’re interested in. Even if one goes to a lot of audio shows, nobody’s heard everything—and certainly not at length in a familiar system. Is it simply the act of comparing the product under review to something that’s a virtue? Seems kind of arbitrary to me.
That’s why the lexicon that HP and others developed can be so helpful. Employed thoughtfully, it can serve as a point of reference that individual product reviews can point to. It’s a lot like reading music criticism: You can learn the tastes, biases, and priorities of a given writer you don’t even often agree with and use a review of his to predict what your own response will be—so long as their listening habits and predilections are constant and consistent.
But as the more technically advanced and expensive the products under consideration get, the harder it is to declare winners and losers, and the more critical it becomes that a potential purchaser get either a good long listen at a dealer or, best of all, the option to return gear after an extended home audition, no questions asked, that Dave Lalin provides.
That said, going forward, I’m promising myself to name more names in the course of my equipment reviews. Thanks to all who brought it up.
Well Troy you a vanishing breed, a functioning physical store. Unfortunately I live in the Midwest so shopping with in person isn’t going to happen. Btw, I am at home now with Covid…third bout…and I am vaxxed up the wazoo, so please be careful.
And I defend your right to make claims about products you sell, and I wish that you may thrive and other B&M stores do the same. Regarding your specific product claims, I have no opinion
I don’t necessarily disagree with sns and, as noted above, the magazine uses several platforms to let readers know what our favorite products are at all price points, both collectively (Editor’s Choice) and individually (Golden Ears.
See? This is the kind of BS logic TAS uses to justify not simply making appropriate comparisons in a review. We’re supposed to weed through Editor’s Choice and Golden Ears lists and then somehow gleen how the review product would compare despite the respective reviews being done in completely different rooms and in completely different systems? Gimme a break!!!
And references to specific competing components do make it into plenty of our reviews.
Uh, really? Do you even read your own magazine? I’d put it at no more than 10%(and that’s being generous) of TAS reviews that provide any kind of useful product comparisons.
But, to state the obvious, the ultimate "reference" for us is "the absolute sound"—live musical performance—and reviews that employ the descriptive language developed by TAS decades ago and that present details of a writer’s subjective experience can also help quite a bit in making a purchasing decision.
But what about recordings made in a studio and made to sound like studio recordings? Are they supposed to sound like live performances too? Are systems supposed to alter studio recordings to sound live the way YOU think the live performance should sound? Bogus! The fact is THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE SOUND except what the recording engineer laid down and how well a system recreates it in a listening room.
And that you’ve constructed some ancient mythical language that somehow is supposed to help a reader weed through a reviewer’s words to somehow magically understand how a product sounds based solely on the reviewer’s individual “subjective” impressions is absurd and precisely why direct product comparisons are so helpful. Many is the time when writing a review I thought I had a product’s sound nailed only to have at least some of my impressions shown to be partially or completely wrong upon substituting a competitive product. Had I written reviews based solely on my own “subjective” impressions almost all my reviews would’ve been incorrect or at least somewhat misleading to readers. That’s precisely why publications like Soundstage! REQUIRE a comparisons section in every review, and each reviewer needs to have a comparable component in their system or they don’t review the product. Product comparisons improve accuracy and usefulness of reviews to readers and holds reviewers (and the magazine) accountable for their observations, but we certainly can’t have any of that TAS world now can we? Plus, it’d involve so much more work and effort on the part of the reviewer meaning you couldn’t crank out as many reviews - oh the horror!
But @aquint by all means feel free to keep twisting yourself in knots trying to defend and justify TAS’ outdated and relatively ineffective review policies. As someone mentioned above, in a world where quality audio dealers are few and far between people rely on product reviews now more than ever and thus need ACCURATE AND ROBUST reviews to help them make purchase decisions, and flowery rhetoric waxing poetic about what a reviewer “thinks” they hear without any stated checks and balances is basically useless and self-important drivel.
You and I had a little back and forth in the Letters section of Fanfare a few years back, and I respect your views. However I haven’t read TAS for a few years either. I was really turned off by the shilling for MQA. And I reject the fundamental premise of a system trying to realize “The Absolute Sound. “. Unless my listening room expands to the size of Chicago’s Symphony Center, my system will at best try to trick me with an illusion. And as for non Classical, who knows what is absolute? What comes out of the mix is whatever decisions the engineer makes.
You ridicule the “Consumer Reports” type of review. Surely we all would like to try each component in our own system and decide. Yet is this practical? Am I going to carry several different two hundred pound floorstanders up the stairs to my listening room and back out? Or will the likes of dCS let me audition a $100K DAC Stack in my own home and send it back 3 days later? Or does Air Force allow $150K turntables out of their factory for an audition?
The typical review will state something like “Peter McGraff of Wilson spent 3 days toeing in my Alexa’s until they were perfect”. Can a mere mortal such as I expect such service? Or else a reviewer might state “The amp made no sound when I turned it on so I emailed the CEO and 3 hours later a truck came with a replacement and the CEO flew in from Germany to plug it in for me”. I can’t even get Frigidaire to fix the ice maker in my refrigerator and it’s under warranty.
I think a few decades reviewing can warp the perspective here. Bricks and mortar stores have gone the way of the Studebaker. In the Covid era most people don’t want to see your face anyway. It is all very fine to be Altruistic and say “We ain’t Consumer Reports, do your own comparisons”. However most of us plebeian non reviewer types have very limited ways to make comparisons. This may explain some of the reason people become furious with dealers plugging their wares here, because actually evaluating these claims is so darn hard. We need more from reviewers than what you traditionally think is your purview. If we don’t get it, we turn elsewhere, and thus less TAS sales, less value for advertising, less money to pay for reviews
I don't necessarily disagree with sns and, as noted above, the magazine uses several platforms to let readers know what our favorite products are at all price points, both collectively (Editor's Choice) and individually (Golden Ears.) And references to specific competing components do make it into plenty of our reviews. But, to state the obvious, the ultimate "reference" for us is "the absolute sound"—live musical performance—and reviews that employ the descriptive language developed by TAS decades ago and that present details of a writer's subjective experience can also help quite a bit in making a purchasing decision. Please continue to sample our reviews—there are plenty of recent ones posted online.
Haven't read TAS reviews in years. Context very meaningful, and that includes all price ranges. So, if context doesn't matter, why do we even need to know rest of equipment in system review piece being inserted into. Why even bother to tell us how said equipment sounds, with no reference for sound quality why would it matter.
Reference or context provides us with a measurement scale which informs our equipment choices. Without that we'd be flying blind.
John Atkinson once advised that a good equipment review should fulfill three functions: To inform, to entertain, and to guide a purchase decision.
Inform: What’s the speaker enclosure made of? What’s the DAC chipset used? How readily is the tonearm’s VTA adjusted? That kind of thing. Also, explanations from a manufacturer as to why the product’s design team made the decisions they did.
Entertain: The review is well-written and fun to read.
Guide a potential purchase: By reading a comprehensive review of the component from someone who has lived with it for months, a potential customer can decide if a product is worthy of further investigation.
"Context," in terms of other, similar products? That can be irresponsible and disrespectful of audio consumers who are capable of creating their own rankings based on their sonic priorities, as well as new product reviews. TAS makes plenty of recommendations—Editors’ Choice, Golden Ears, Buyers Guides, etc. But making a significant audio purchase isn’t like buying a dorm refrigerator after reading a survey of ten models in Consumer Reports.
We want to help you devise a short list of products, winnowed down from a larger number, we’d hope, from reading our reviews. But TAS is not going to tell you that Server A gets an A-minus while Server B gets a B-plus—and thus Server A is "better." That doesn’t serve anyone’s interest. You’re just going to have to hear it yourself, if you’ve decided you are seriously considering a new product covered in he magazine.
... what I don’t understand is how people can begin to have any sort of an opinion on a component they’ve never actually listened to only to be triggered emotionally by the retail price ...
I don't get it either, @in_shore, so please let me know if you ever figure it out. My best guess is that some people are just basically angry and A'gon is their outlet for it.
I used my Gryphon Antileon EVO Stereo amp and Gryphon Pandora pre-amp with a friend's Paradigm Persona speakers. Like @havocman , I also found the Persona's bright and edgy. The Gryphon equipment has never been accused of being bright and certainly not considered receiver level quality.
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