You tube hifi influencers. Love them or hate them?

I like some of them: OCD Mikey for example strikes me as honest- I states "I'm a dealer I want to sell you what I like" 

The Chinese Dude- Thomas & Stereo does a pretty good job unless he's pitching some ChiFi stuff. Way back when I bought a Suncoz introductory priced DAC based on his recommendation and hated it. He is honest about his amp- Galleon. He openly states he wants you to buy it because he makes it. That's pretty honest in my book. 

Paul McGowan's PS Audio daily vids are good. He is honest about his intentions to sell you his gear. Again- to me that's solid. 

Shameless plug for my local dealer who I have really grown to love- he doesn't post youtube vids and I'm after him to do so. He's brutally honest and has guided me to lower priced items that turned out to be well-bought. He can't discount some stuff like his Magnepan, Audio Research and Sonus Faber lines but one time he bought the pen in my pocked for $12,000 cash right after I bought a set of Audio Research Reference 160m Mk2 amps. Apparently he really liked Bank Of America blue plastic pens!  audioexcellence.us in Murrells Inlet SC. Eric is the owner. help him out if you can. High-end 2 channel dealers are dying off rapidly. Plus he pours Woodford in his listening room. :)

Hate them but for a different reason.  I will only watch youtube if there is no other way to get the info and I need it really badly.  99% of the time, if I'm sitting, I'm listening to music.  So I want to read info, not listen to it.  My ears are occupied.  So I never go there.

Of course the monitization of the internet is moving all info to aural.  not good.

Jerry

I have found YouTube videos quite valuable when I am considering buying a new piece of gear. One of these days I'm going to buy a dedicated streamer (I currently use a laptop) and I've watched videos on several different models. A video is an excellent way to review something like a streamer because it has an app that can be complicated to set up and you can see what the display looks like when in use.

Most of them selling another cold day in hell.

Some good opinions here and no doubt we should trust our own ears but there are many who do not have good dealers close to where they live to personally audition gear.

I think some of the online reviewers have limited value, but what often is the greatest problem is #1, a lack of technical knowledge, and 2, no long term reporting that can give a clue to reliability, among other things. Like many of you, my system is largely tube based although rather modest with a Conrad Johnson LS17 preamp and some Quicksilver Mid Mono Power Amps, both with vintage quality tubes.

Recently, I was thinking about diving into the world of 300B based amps. No local dealers had any 300B amps to audition, despite living in a city of 3 million population. So I did a google search which took me to, among many reviews, some you tube reviews of 2 very inexpensive ChiFi amps, available from Amazon, or direct from China, and these 2 amps had universal praise from you tubers Guttenberg, Thomas and Stereo, Jay’s Iyagi, and Steve Huff.

Thankfully, another you tuber, Skunkie Designs, who has extensive technical knowledge, posted about some serious circuit deficiencies in those amps that were creating both performance and reliability issues as well as showing the mods to correct the issues.

I’m sure there are many people who were lured into buying these amps and regret it. So theres the good and the bad of it I guess.