what are your views regarding reviewing styles ?

i'd like to clarify my use of the term factual.

i meant the perceptions of reviewers without adjectives.

here's an example of expressing a thought two ways.

"there is an elevation of harmonics in the upper mids/lower treble region"

"the component sounds bright"

both relate to a reviewer's perceptions--accurate or not.

the first is a report, the second, at least implicitly attempts to influence.

thus being factual means reporting what you are without using adjectives and without attempting to influence.

I would have to say that your second example of a "review", a factual description without opinion, isn't really a review. If I want product descriptions I'll go to a manufacturers website, but what I, and many others, want is the opinion of an experienced listener.That's a review, and though all reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, I find many of them to be quite helpful.

While I have touched on this in one of your other threads, and with the danger of repeating myself:

Any efforts to establish objective terms are useless in my opinion: Many terms that are used to describe are based on metaphors or analogies. The terms will inevitably carry a connotation that is subjective. So do general terms like "High-End", which will never be well defined for that reason. Even terms like "neutral", "transparent" carry a strong connotation that depends on the reader.

Even if a completely objective description or review, that is solely based on terms that do not carry any connotation whatsoever, would be possible, it would not be satisfactory. In fact, for many things we can discern with our hearing, no objective terms of the form you propose exist.

As a last point, people do generally tend to understand analogies and metaphors better than purely objective (scientific) terms. For example, even in Science, where everything has an accurate description (in the case of Physics the description is usually mathematical), in order to communicate scientific facts and results to a general audience, one uses often imprecise terms like metaphors and analogies that people can understand much easier than Mathematics. Why should audio reviews be any different?

Just my experience and opinion of course...

Rene

i may not have completely communicated my point.

a review is a collection of perceptions.

it is at least a report of what a reviewer heard after hours and hours of listening.

there are ways to describe what one hears which are analaogous to a report.

like a scientist who does an experiment and reports findings.

a reviewer has anecdotal evidence to present regarding the sound of a component/stereo system.

if a reviewer says he does not the ring of a telephone with compoent a but does hear the telephone with component b, this is factual reporting based upon the reviewers perception.

such a statement, one could infer is objective without an attempt to influence.

if a reviewer says i heard instrument a behind instrument b--again a perception reprted without an attempt to influence.

finally if a reviewer reports nan inability to tell whether there were 1 or 2 violins on a recording, or whether an instrument was a tenor or alto sax, such information is useful to a potential buyer.

it is this approach which i consider reporting--communicating perceptions, without ornate phrase which are relevant.