Yeah, this is just not getting through the thick wall of ego, so I'll try to make it more basic. First, I said I'm not associated with Magico nor did I ever say I was a fan of them. That's your invention in a fairly obvious attempt to try to defend your similarly obviously shallow efforts at reviewing a piece of audio equipment. My criticism of your transitory impressions are, in fact, independent of brand or positive or negative recommendations.
As far as me being the only one criticizing your "process," I'd refer you to Dweller and Bifwynne above who also question your methods and who also have over 1300 posts here on Audiogon. But your're right, we're not criticizing your "process." We are criticizing you precisely because you have NO process. To clarify and simplify since it's clearly not penetrating the ego yet, let's use your own words to try to finally hammer it home. Here's a quote:
"I forgot the source appliance, but it streamed through the Berkeley Reference DAC, another Bay Area manufacturer. I find the Berkeleys a bit too cool for my tastes, but I don't think they'll affect my comments here."
Um, why would that be??? So, I guess we'll dismiss this as an insignificant variable and just somehow magically listen through it. Ok. Then there's this...
"This was also my first time listening to CATs in any situation, so if you are familiar with them, apply your own adjustments to my comments accordingly."
Oh, yes, let's all channel our memories back to when we all had CATs in our system so we can adjust any of these comments accordingly. Another meaningless caveat to the absolute lack of any meaningful review process.
Now, in addition to looking past these two obviously meaningless inconveniences and adding, oh, let's see, transport, interconnects, speaker and digital cables, power cords, power conditioning, and a completely unfamiliar room, combined with the fact that you've never heard these speakers before -- why would we ever doubt that what you heard was worthy of specifically targeting the speakers as...
"not for long term critical music listening. If you truly need speakers to act as transparent windows into a recorded environment that can be listened to for hours and never tire of I think you'll find these speakers too hot and seasoned for your needs unless you have matching hearing loss in which case they may actually be perfect."
Ok, if you want to position this as an observation or impression that's one thing. Or if you say something like "within the constraints of the listening conditions here this is what I heard," well then fine. But what you do is pass this literal seat-of-the-pants transient audition as occurring in "what I would consider the best possible circumstances." So, an unfamiliar room with unfamiliar equipment with unfamiliar music is "the best possible circumstances" for the purposes a meaningful and valid review that justifies your level of conviction for such extreme assertions on one specific component? I think not.
A more robust, meaningful, and actual "process" would involve, at the very least, substituting known components in the audio chain, including other speakers in this instance, so there's an actual basis for comparison in real time in the same environment. Without this, there's no hope of identifying the actual source of any sound characteristics you're actually hearing. To do otherwise is at the very least arrogance, and at its worst, misleading for readers. Or, put another way, it's just a really lazy way of stroking your ego and passing your voice off as some sort of authoritative wisdom. If you want to put something out there that could be truly useful to audiophiles, make the effort and do the work to borrow, un-box, and break in equipment from manufacturers in your own system, listen for many hours and swap out your own equipment for comparison, and then spend many hours consolidating all that hard-won and actually valuable knowledge into a well-written and coherent review. Given what I've seen I seriously doubt you've got the desire or work ethic to produce something at this level that could be truly meaningful or useful to this community. But if you keep doing what you're doing you're just a lazy hack trying to make a name for yourself on the cheap, and I suspect if you keep trying to peddle it you'll find many more members than me and a couple others calling you out on it.
Now, you can keep trying to walk all this back by saying that people should use their own ears, but by the nature of your half-baked, semi-informed, seat-of-the-pants, and completely un-rigorous methods you might actually stop someone who might actually like these speakers (or other products in the future) from actually auditioning them. That's the real shame, although I seriously doubt anyone searching for speakers at this level would give your impressions any credence anyway. They'll easily see your stuff for what it is. But you keep on truckin' Tin Ear. By the way, here's Webster's definition of tin ear...
"a lack of ability to hear something (such as music or speech) in an accurate and sensitive way." Nice choice.
