What's the point of reviewing?


What’s up with anyone’s opinion good or worse, unless we have identical equipment and acoustic spaces, it’s mute.

voodoolounge

If you like quality stereo equipment, reviews are a good way to help separate the wheat from the chaff if you’re a consumer, and not an expert. You can look at product reviews online, comments by readers on Audiogon and other forums, and "best of the year" ratings by the major audio magazines etc. and find by consensus what components are among the best out there in your price range. Then you have a reasonable guide to know what’s worth seeking out for a demo. Some of the folks writing above are excellent sources of information.

Unless you live near a major metropolitan area, that’s about as good as it will get for you, short of when you’re able to return equipment that doesn’t quite work in your listening room or with components you might already have. You can often research compatibility too to preclude those type issues. If you’ve got more or better ways to make equipment purchases that would be good info to share here.

Mike

Just another ways ’n means to get to hang with your therapist...

May be an image of record player and text that says ’I have a therapist. Her name is music.’

...beats chatting ’bout it at the end of any day... ;)

Go visit...

Moot...man...Statements of the Obvious warning: Good reviewers make good reading regardless of what you might think about what's being reviewed, and can lead you to trying something yourself maybe. Or not. I get most of my reading from book reviews, bought plenty of gear (and sporty cars) that had good reviews, and continue to try not to be a luddite living in a cave.

From some reviewers I learned how to be a better listener. In my early audiophile years that was J. Gordon Holt and Dick Olsher, later Art Dudley. Harry Pearson’s writings expanded the language and vocabulary of hi-fi reviews, a subjective-review vocabulary initially created by JGH in his revolutionary Stereophile reviews of the early-1960’s. You youngin’s missed all the action ;-) .

@roxy54

stay on em rox

somebody has to push for a proper quality standard for the discourse around here, i am glad you are helping do this! 😁👍

how does one sort through what is available to draw salient, accurate, reliable conclusions upon which to act?

Good question. As one audiophile’s wife said in exasperation "They all sound good, just pick one". And that is the saving grace of hi-end audio.

We are talking about the LEVEL of sound reproduction here, not each variance. I have 2 different systems. The QUALITY of sound is equivalent. The TYPE of sound is not. I could be happy with either one. Depending on the day or the song, one shines over the other. That kind of nit picking can put you into an asylum. . . . for sure.

Whether 35 people or 3,500 like something it doesn’t mean I will. We’re talking PREFERENCES here, not quality like it will blow up and burn down your house. I suspect I have missed the stereo of my dreams because of dismissing something from a bad review and can never hear it for myself.

Have you ever seen an unsalable house? An unfillable occupation? So I don’t go with that numbers method. Someone out there will buy anything, like anything, do anything. Although if it brings peace to anyone, God bless them, go for it.

Reviewers are very consistent about NOS DACS and I agree. If I read reviews I wouldn’t own one because it doesn’t align with what my MIND wants. Reviews appeal to your mind and your imagination. What you think you want to hear, not the realty of what you actually hear. After extended listening I kept my NOS DAC and it hasn’t been easy for my ears to override my mind. That is, what I hear (ears) winning out over what I think I want to hear (mind). I still know I don’t like it regardless of what it sounds like.

@recklesskelly 

"To sell advertising in their rags pulp and electronic."

What kind of a sentence is that?

Just turn the volume up and the reviews will not be mute. Of course, if you are reading the review that won't help and my comment is moot. 

When i bought my Sansui alpha , i could not stumble on one single bad review.... It Takes me a very long time to read them all... But it was fun...All positive...Simple i order two different Sansui... I never regret it....

But when i read about the AKG K340, i was desesperate... All my other 8 headphones were , now i can say it "crap" or so unnatural ... I decided to go speakers again after having sold Alas! my Tannoy dual gold ( 2 pairs)..

But Speakers also did not satisfy me really, even My Tannoy...I did not know basic acoustic miracles at this time...

Then 5 years ago just before i begin my acoustic experiments journey, i bought the AKG K340...In spite of some negative reviews...Why?

Because i apply my statistical reading analysis and there is more cultist fans of the K340 than people not loving them... The main criticisms were: mismatch between the electret and dynamic cell and contamination between mids and bass...

The very well known Tyll Hertzens said exactly that : mismatch between drivers and boominess...But i read many, many others reviews with more positive reaction and no words about the mismatch and the boominess save few people...

I respect Tyll but i read even the patent of Dr. Gorike the physicist founder of AKG  to figure out how this headphone worked... After all it is the most celebrated piece of AKG ... I owned the K701 and it is "unnatural" sound completely... The K701 was celebrated for years...Not by me...

I must say now that almost all headphones for me are not well designed acoustically and i know it by experience and by my experiments with the K340...

I described all this because we must analyse the more reviews possible...but in the headphone case reviews are misleading, because very, very few headphones are good acoustically... Most people dont even know why...They never listen to a really good headphone with a speaker like  holographic sound  , ethereal highs, and baqs that shake my body as with subs...

Now why Tyll, an expert reviewer of headphones miss the K340 ?

Because like most reviewers he does not created a system around them to serve them , he reviewed them ,  one after the other,  right out of the box without even knowing and learning how to use  this complex headphone peculiarities... And he does not realized that the only hybrid ever designed with success and generating cultish love for 40 years need to be LEARNED before being evaluated ... And he did not realized because he never listen to an hybrid that the sound impression will be completely different...The brain must take notice of it...  We must learn how to listen a new product, especially a verty complex headphone...Hard to drive and impossible to optimize if we dont understand why this resonators inside are there and what is this dual chamber inside etc... It takes me 6 months to eliminate the boominess and the supposed mismatch which i perceived the first day as Tyll described....... i put 6 modifications...And this diamond shine now astonishingly...For example i opened it and put two types of vibration control materials , i tried 5 pads...i discover the good one with the right dimension...i cut off the thick plastic grid inside that protect the driver ( AKG put it to protect the product not for S.Q. at all ) Etc...

Now this lesson was for me : never trust any SINGLE reviewer.... Trust a large numbers who will reveal in their own way if we analyse their language for each acoustic factor what the product can do...

I read a review by another expert in Israel by the way, a very serious dude, expert in headphone optimization,  who transformed and optimizeed the K340 ... He give to them almost a maximal note of excellence... This compensated for the negative Tyll review in my mind and convince me after the lost of my speakers/room that i can also myself  put the K340 to his top level ...( it take me 6 months each day of listening experiments in my 10 months absence from audiogon)

 

No reviewer even very competent one own the truth by himself alone  ... We must analyse many reviews...

 

 

Reviewing is a starting point, not an end point. Reviewers aren't a talisman or an 8-Ball. I used to rely on them for guidance and learned to just read them for the updates in tech, keep up with what's new, and with the talented ones, for the humor and insights. 

You're basically on your own in this hobby and don't ever see that as a limitation. It's an advantage. Follow your heart and use your ears and you'll be happy. If you click with a certain reviewer, then that can help narrow down choices.

All the best,
Nonoise

Reading one review about any product is not nearly enough to figure out its potential. One must take the time to read many reviews before you can see any kind of pattern that may fit your listening environment. It usually works for me,  not a fan of auditioning in live rooms as they don't represent mine. 

@voodoolounge 

I think you meant moot. Anyway, when you get to know a reviewer well enough you can begin to give some weight to his conclusions about how something sounds. It's helpful if you can't go somewhere to hear it.

Reviews are fun. They introduce you to products you might miss. If the reviewer understands functionally how a product is designed(a few do) you learn what the designer is trying to do and a bit of if he's going in the direction he wants. If you read enough reviews and get to know a reviewer's tastes If he knows his own and is consistent) over time you may even get a good idea if a product interests you and if it's worth seeking out to audition.

You can take what any reviewer says with a grain of salt regarding sound quality, but reviewers can also tell you much about the feature set of a device, how well those features worked, how snappy any software was, and if it had issues connecting to wi-fi, so you'd know to steer clear. And you can at least see the device on screen in a real room, not just some well Photoshopped ad copy. 

If you watch or read a few good reviewers, you can learn their preferences and whether they align with yours. 

The trick is that one must be able to take all the information available for a product and synthesize that information to derive conclusions that have a good probability of panning out. Not always an easy task. Much easier to just take advice from someone you trust. That can work as well if that person has correctly done his homework. Sometimes it’s simply just hit or miss and try try again.

 

You read a review. The reviewer makes a convincing case as to whether the component under review might be something that'll match your taste, give your system new life and altogether enhance your listening pleasure. The component is within your budget...or just slightly beyond it. You buy the thing. You connect it up and listen for a couple days. Does it indeed increase your pleasure? Is it breaking in and sounding a bit better as the days go by? If so, yeah! You're a happy guy or gal!

the generalized question, in this day and age of information overload and the highly questionable veracity of much of said information, is how does one sort through what is available to draw salient, accurate, reliable conclusions upon which to act?

this question/issue applies in spades in this case of audio equipment reviews and online discussions... and lessons learned should apply profitably to all major decisions where info gathering is necessary

We dont read reviews about an amplifier the same way we read reviews about meals and movies at all ...😁😊 Acoustic concepts are not food cooking or about "taste"...Nor movie genre...

With gear components we identifies what each listener say about, dynamic, timbre, transients, soundfield imaging and soundstaging, with what kind of gear his impressions are build , what are the musical albums used , what type of room...Etc and especially we pay attention to what he does not speak about.. We put them on a paper... After each reviews we add a column...

Statistics here means only that 35 reviews analysed is better than 5....The acoustic factors at play for the analysis had nothing to do with the 35 five different personnalities who created their own reviews...( except for common place fact as : we dont analyse review of people loving heavy metal to pick a balance headphone )

The point here is that if so many DIFFERENT people with DIFFERENT taste CONVERGE in impressions about each acoustic factors then you can believe it as a PROBABLE fact...

What the tastes of a single reviewer are MEANS nothing, because we analyse each acoustic factors written ideally by 35 different people, THATS THE POINT... ...

It is evident that even if someone has the same taste as me in music it does not means that the shape of his ears, the distance between his ears, the different components he was using, and in a very different room than mine all factors that differentiate him from me will help in a lesser way for a good pick up choice of gear than analysing the highest numbers of opinions possible about bass, timbre, highs, imaging, soundstage, transients ...This is so evident that i will not go further...

But if we are lazy we can read a reviewer or two we like and if they say this is very good, we can belive it....For sure... But it is not my general idea about reviews analysis...

And opposing the "similar taste" factor to my "statistics" is preposterous, because my point of view INCLUDE even taste of the reviewers but it is not the main factor at all , acoustic factors are the main one... we can even rank reviewers by our favorable opinion about their teste... ( I generally exclude heavy metal listener opinions or electronical music)...

I pick the Sansui amplifier and my AKG K340 as i described...Complete success...

 

Every piece of equipment I have bought I have auditioned in my listening space. Plenty of dealers do this. The last piece I bought was a $26,000.00 DAC. Auditioned in my system for 3 weeks. 

@mahgister is right. There is strength in numbers. Many people drawing similar conclusions and representing a decent random sample is the secret sauce. Or even just several knowledgeable sources might do it.  
 

 

The point is well taken -- this is an extraordinarily hard thing to compare for physical reasons above and beyond the interpretive and physiological differences btw people. But, of course, conditions never need to be "identical" to be not mooted.

When reviewers are articulate, they at least give a hint about what they like and what they’re hearing. That hint serves as a clue for people who find that their tastes might align.

Cf. Why read movie reviews or restaurant reviews? Same reason -- bc we find others there who seem like us AND they describe their listening conditions and tastes to help us see if it’s close enough to even take a hint.

This has nothing to do with statistics. It's about finding people who speak our language. Whose words are music to our ears.

One review means NOTHING ...Nevermind the reviewer...

Reviews are only meaningful in their statistical numbers...

Then you compare them for ALL acoustics factors...

You decode each word associated with each factors...

Then the most important part is to read what is missing, what is not there...

The text of a review say half the story, the other half is missing or between the lines...

I applied this method for all my purchase...

I made few errors when i underestimated my own ignorance and when i fail to spot  my unidentified needs,,,Not because of the reviews analysis ...

Then BEFORE reading reviews identify your real needs...

If you read reviews without precise needs you will be tempted to upgrade foolishly most of the times...

In one word : reviewers dont matter, only the sheer numbers of reviews for a product to be ANALYSED...This method for sure is valid for well known products not obscure one...

Then there is no need even to listen to it before buying it ... Anyway i cannot and could not listen before buying...This is the reason i developed this simple but efficient method...But my field work was reading analysis... 😊

Good question and IMHO not much other than entertainment. It’s more like advertising under the guise of "information". They just confuse the issue with insecurities and doubt.

Reviews can be good to:

1) Let you know a product is out there.

2) Basic specs like dimensions, power consumption, and frequency range.

 

As for sound quality, if you listen to sound with your ears, not your eyes (what you read) or your mind (your imagination), there is not much point to them. Even if we can all agree Benchmark DAC’s are "analytical", what does that mean to YOU and will YOU like it? You have to hear it for yourself.

There are just too many variables. Have you ever gone for a demo at a dealer of hi-fi show and system sounds great. Then you put in your own music and the sound falls apart? Why is that? Can it be fixed by tweaking? I’ve heard systems go from "mid-fi" to "hi-fi" just by changing one component, speaker placement, the room, or the song.

One guy who worked at a stereo store said when they had merchandise they wanted to move, they set it up really good in a conspicuous place in the store.

Sure, some dealers allow home auditions but unless you have a few components to compare to, does not help that much IMHO. Plus is not easy to arrange to get a bunch of components into your house then send back.

 

@voodoolounge 

You're right in that everyone's rooms, systems, and ears/subjective opinions are different and in no way can replace listening for yourself.

However that isn't always possible so we often turn to second and third hand opinions for further information.

Since most reviews are entirely subjective it can be of considerable help if the reviewer can provide information as to how the product compares with its better known peers.

Comparative reviews are also better because that's what we humans are good at.

And that includes reviewers.

Reviews provide information and it is up to the reader to determine if anything of value was passed on.  More likely, the comments provide a variety of perspectives and the value here can be more useful than the initial review.  Regarding the value of reviews found in major publications, there has been some controversy as to how advertising affects the reviewer’s perspective.

I take reviews with a grain of salt.   To me, it's great when i buy a product and then it is on a Best Of , Buyer's Guide , or gets strong praise from critics

It is great to read other OWNER's  impressions of their gear.    Some stuff  has universal appeal and others are real niche.... its up to you to decide what's best.   What's best is to demo in home if at all possible 

Many direct sale manufacturers and online dealers offer free returns. Certainly most Audiogon sellers of used gear do not ... even an audition at a dealer can be helpful if not ideal...and reviews can help if you are familiar with the reviewer 

 

@ghdprentice "Many of us have pursued high end audio for many decades… one of the reason it can be a long term pursuit is that there is so much to learn and ultimately the problem you are trying to solve is so ambiguous"

That is the truth. 

@jl35 Auditioning in your listening room is helpful but I don't know of sellers allowing that to happen 

with so much gear out there, good reviews help some decide what to audition, not what to buy...

The best reviews are professional reviewers that have experienced many components across the sound quality / cost points. They show their associated equipment and use standard high end audio terminology. Think Stereophile, The Absolute Sound and HiFi+. If you are serious a pot this pursuit you read reviews and hear as many of the same components as have been reviewed, thusly calibrating yourself to a rough standard. By listening over time to many components you can begin hearing different components within a system.

Being able to choose compatible components comes with this experience. While there are many dimensions to this… combining components that match your tastes and values in music helps move closer to compatible.

Many of us have pursued high end audio for many decades… one of the reason it can be a long term pursuit is that there is so much to learn and ultimately the problem you are trying to solve is so ambiguous.

 

Reviews on Audiogon are much more problematic. You have to get the context and values of the poster from the post and hopefully they’re virtual systems to understand their experience, values, and bias. For some posters it is easy, some hard.

There is a lot of valuable method and general info that is really valuable here though.

Then it would seem you never read or listen to reviews. Fair enough. Other people do find value in them, as our experiences tend to confirm what some reviewers have to say.