Some famous reviewers have atrocious listening rooms!

A lot of rooms I have seen on Youtube look over-damped. Of course, we are listening to those rooms with microphones and Youtube compression, so it's hard to tel what is really going on. Some rooms look like they could use some "livening" with a bit more reflectivity.

A picture is worth 1,000 words.

An audio review is worth 0 words.

Forum posts...

I havent read all of these posts so this has likely been said, however...

I agree with the commenters that you cannot tell how a room will sound by looking at it. Even acousticians have a hard time designing a good sounding space, where there are millions in the budget. See, e.g., the David Geffen hall and its issues. So if the assumption is that throwing money at the acoustics of the space will necessarily solve the problem, not sure that is the case.

Even if the reviewers' rooms are compromised, many reviews / reviewers (John Atkinson for one), DO discuss how a product sounded in their room versus the co-reviewers room. He even measures the response, with speakers, and publishes the graphs showing differences. He will offer comments. If i recall, Michael Fremer's room has some bass boost below 100 hz. Atkinson comments on this often. 

And even if the rooms are compromised, their rooms are (presumably) consistent / not variable. Therefore if Fremer says that component A has such and such a  sound, whereas product B has this and that sound, He is comparing within the same room and system. So the differences will or will not be there, irrespective of the room.

My biggest peeve is that reviewers hearing should be tested and published. The opinions of ~75 year old man have to be taken with a grain of salt, considering most that age probably cant hear above 9 or 10k hZ. So if they are telling you there is no roll-off or there is airiness in the sound, that may be the case, but its not at frequencies above those...

and +1 to the commenter who points out he would rather learn of a reviewer's opinions of sound in a room that looks like his own, than what it is in an anechoic chamber. Unless you have an anechoic chamber in your own home. 

IMHO audio gear reviews are mostly for the purposes of entertainment except where objective facts are provided as part of researching gear. That is not to denigrate as much as properly categorize the purpose.  There are so few lukewarm, much less negative reviews...they are there for the pleasure of reading.

In terms of room, most reviewers know their room and their gear very well and if there is a difference by swapping out gear, they will hear it. I don't really audition gear until I get it to my room.  After hearing it in their listening room, the reviewer will say "this isn't quite to the quality of my reference piece, but it punches above its weight and anyone would be happy to have it." There are like 5 reviews in the history of audio that don't say basically that.

Finally, I believe in trained or dedicated listening, but short of an actual disability in hearing (i.e. partial deafness) I don't think you need to have the ears of a puppy to gauge gear quality. As long as you have a good baseline from listening to your own gear intently, you will hear if there is any delta.  Or you will think you do, if you spent enough on the upgrade :)