Would you donate a dollar to have these Members Review a Product?

"I’d prefer to hear their kit on a high-res video host using a solid, acknowledged recorder."

Reviews do have their place and purpose.  You get to read about products.  Without reviews, you would be hard pressed to even know about them. Take the personal reviews with a grain of salt.  There is serious bias with reviewers. However, that allows you to read about the specifications, see the pictures, and decide to go hear for yourself.

I don't purchase audio magazines often, but when I do, I want to read about the product listed.  Like wine reviewers, I don't agree with most of them by experience, so, that isn't why I read the reviews. 

Most audio stores don't carry very many products within a certain category. They can't.  entirely too expensive for them. So, audio stores are a good place to listen.  Remembering that it isn't your home and is not using your other equipment, so it may sound different in your home.  Same for reading a review.  not your home (or room), not your appurtenant equipment, and definitely not your ears, likes or dislikes.  So take it with a grain.

But, without the magazines and/or reviews, most of us wouldn't even know a product existed.

But no.  I won't pay (at this time) for a review on-line.  I purchase magazines at times to see where the industry is currently at. 

enjoy

In  30 years or more,  I’ve found but a couple reviewers published whose ears and tastes I share closely, though not at all precisely.

Equipment accounts merely create interest, or point to certain components which possess value, and some of which have immense value 

these accounts say nothing of how well they will synergize with your outfit.

I'm not into Hero worship much at all. so paying anyone here or elsewhere for their thoughts on any item or on items someone else just entertained seems silly.

this is of course unless all of the predetermined 'reviewers' heard the exact same setup  in  one particular setting, and THEN exchanged in or out the item to be appraised simultaneously .

otherwise the variables are too immense for any true consensus of opinion on anything except in very general terms.

One last note on gear articles is this, a fair consensus can be achieved when multiple writers account well of a thing in its overall reproduction of music, though the variables of ears, rooms, and ancillary gear prevents  anything from being an all world beating bit of kit without question.

Though in this last scenario it sure will make one’s interest and intrigue with a thing grow.

Yet in spite of identical gear being written on by a handful of folks, there is an alternative path for finding solid bits of audio excellence. One can regularly glean from the classified listings, what seems popular, what seems to be reliable well performing pieces simply by counting how many are listed for sale or wanted. Though often these pieces are not in the ultra high end, money wise. 

Its always this hobby’s sole outstanding caveat: its your money, use your ears and then your wife’s best judgement, or follow your heart and do the Audiogon shuffle… buy, try, keep or flip. Then wash rinse and repeat until satisfied, or worn out financially or emotionally.

For me the ‘fun’ is NOT the journey, it’s the destination. The journey is merely the fundamental effort prerequisite to finding synergy and harmonic integrity. 

Curiously enough, we all have or have had, destination gear… unless we feel the grass is greener  if we just … and then the Road Goes On Forever, and the party never ends!