Who do you trust?

I trust my wife, who is blessed with fabulous hearing. Like Mapman, I also trust my dog who of course has even better ears than my wife. I also trust myself.

I do not trust any of the "luminaries" no matter what publication. There are entirely too many variables for me to consider purchasing equipment without adequate home audition.

A number of years ago on the TAS forum, I asked a simple, sincere, and straightforward question regarding the hearing acuity of reviewers, especially as they aged. I wanted to know if they were tested periodically or if at all.

Well, you can only imagine the proverbial hornet's nest that created!

Not only was the essence of my question ignored, the current editor's reply side-stepped, and obfuscated the subject and another prominent TAS reviewer said that if his readers agreed to have their eyes tested, then might he consider getting his ears tested!

I trust me and thee but sometimes I have my doubts about thee.

Forgot to mention, I trust the gov'r'mint.

How a piece being reviewed sounds to the reviewer is a biased personal value judgement at best with no empirical or factual comparison base.

Add to it that how it sounds is entirely system dependent - just because it sounds good in his unique system, is of nil assurance that it will sound good in yours.

Add to this, that there exists , at a minimum , the murky optics of potential manufacturer and magazine influence in appearance w/o any reference to in fact .... as highlighted by the very creation of this thread;

Sidebar: is the reliance or trust limited to just background reading only or does it form a primary step in the buying decision? IMO the degree of osmosis from what you "rely on " is much different.

In any case, with these qualifiers, where is there any basis for "reliance"or "trust"?

- The reviewers do perform a valuable function in highlighting new products.

- Hence An actual personal audition with your own ears is the only worthy basis , a blind purchase particularly in the high-end arena is overly risky than many of us hobbyists may elect to assume.

In God we trust ...... (U can fill in the rest ....)

Akg_ca

How a piece being reviewed sounds to the reviewer is a biased personal value judgement at best with no empirical or factual comparison base.

That's not universally true. Reviewers are known to compare the item being reviewed to equipment in their existing system, which may or may not be revealing depending on how close the products are to each other. Some reviews cover 3 or 4 similar products where the whole purpose of the review is to point out similarities and differences. Robert Reina, who reviews inexpensive speakers for Stereophile, almost always compares the speaker under review with three other speakers of the same type and in the same price range.