Zaikesman, I have no intentions on "jumping on you". I happened to open both threads that came up during my search for Meitner amplifiers. When I read your reply to Tupperz, I must take exceptions with how you belittled him and now me for not writing "better reviews" (in your own words)and worse yet, "lazy attemts at review" (verbatim quote). I was hoping to present another point of view where others like myself are appreciative of short and concise reviews. If I find a brief review of a product interesting, then I shall seek out the product for an audition. Now bear with me while I explain why I find it frustrating reading some of the reviews which you may deem "better". I do not read with any interest reviews that deal primarily with quantitative differences between products. That is more mids, less mids; more bass or less bass. More dynamic peaks or less. More depth or reverberation or less. Unless you know intimately how a recording was done, including knowing what the engineer had intended the tonal balance of his recording to be etc., judging various components by tonal balance or by the amount of ambience is imprecise at best. If an engineer had intended his recording to have a sound that I happen not to like, finding a piece of audio equipment that would change it to my liking would be foolhardy. That would be like making a bad situation worse for all other cases except for one. With various equipment that have different tonal colors, one can certainly change the quantity of bass, mids, highs or hall ambience to ones liking for that particular recording. But it wouldn't make other recordings sound more musical.
Now if you agree with me that quatatative differences should not be used as the absolute reference, then can you tell me what is a "silvery" sound? Or "liquid" or "full and rich"? And what in the world is "blackness between notes"? In a concert hall with long reverberation time, how can there be "blackness between notes"?! By the way, I have not read any of your reviews, and I don't know if you have personally used any of these as descriptions of what you hear in your evaluations. But this is the typical nonsense that I read over and over in so many reviews. If I have offended you or others who may have used these descriptions, I apologize. But I hope that this will be taken as constructive criticism. I am definitely not directing it specifically at you, Zaikesman. Back to my point: How in world can we use any of these as THE reference and deemed it to be absolutely correct when we were not present when the recording was done?
The only foolproof way of evaluating a product is by evaluating its rhythm and pace. Better rhythm and pace comes from tracking the amplitudes and frequencies of the musical information correctly. No amount of added distortions can cause the music to have better rhythm and pace. Whilst microphonic components when excited can give us more of a sense of ambience. Or a mild peak in the midrange can bring out "more depth" or sweeter sounding mid-tones. These distortions will cause the music to have a greater level of confused rhythm and pace. Music lovers will agree that it’s the expressiveness in the playing of the music that gives us greater goose-bump factors. I can get goose-bumps listening to a great concert in a not so great concert hall, but I cannot get goose-bumps from hearing a poor performance in a wonderful sounding concert hall. Unfortunately, informing others that a piece of equipment really gets the rhythm and pace of the music right is not glamourous. Besides being to hear the musicians better express their interpretations of the music, I cannot make it any more romantic. So you find my review short, dull and uninteresting? I hope that there are many other like me who find short reviews the opposite.
So, there you have it, Zaikesman, a somewhat longer than intended dissertation on how I evaluate my audio components. I no longer have much patience in reading reviews that do not deal with the rhythm and pace or the expressiveness of the music playing. The beauty of this is that rhythm and pace is in all forms of music, so I don't even have to tell you about my musical preferences. Does it really matter what kind of music one likes if one can hear greater expressiveness in the music making by a Stevie Ray Vaughan, a Winton Marsalis, a Miles Davis or a Glenn Gould? I hope some day you too will get rhythm and pace in your evaluation.
