Audio reviews: too many analogies, never simple, but most of all, never clear.

I am the last word in hi end audio as its my money.

Otherwise I can somewhat agree. I recall one review that was mostly about the bottle of Whisky used while the listening was conducted!

Welcome to the decline of journalism, hiendmmoe. The time respecting approach you’re wanting used to be the norm. First sentence lays out the theme. First paragraph fleshes it out. Subsequent paragraphs follow a structure.

Like this. The New York Times style book is the industry standard. The Times has an ideology to push, and its an ideology that cannot win on its own merits but only with the help of a manipulative narrative. Over time this narrative style of writing has corrupted the whole of journalism, to the point where its impossible to read a Stereophile review without Orange Man Bad slipping in there somewhere.

Or wine. Take your pick of irrelevant culture comments, virtue signaling segues.

What I do to save time is scan right past all the fluff, which in my book most of the tech talk is just as bad, and skip to the listening impressions. Then while reading those I skip past any reference to music I don’t own. All I care about are the listening impressions. What did the reviewer hear? How does he describe it? If its not what I’m looking for, or even if it is but he hasn’t demonstrated an ability to adequately describe it, then I am gone. Done.

Its amazing how well this works. All my gear has been bought this way for years now, and I don’t think it ever has failed me. My turntable, arm, cartridge, phono stage, interconnect, amp, speaker cables, and DBA were all bought this way.

Its a shame what they have done to journalism. Oh well. We gotta roll with it. Adapt. Darwin. I Ching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6NxWID2r6E

Perhaps the reviewers get paid per word.  Or perhaps it has to be a certain length.  I have found the reviews at 6 Moons have so much extra fluff in them, you need to read between the lines. 

There's actually an art to writing.  It's lost on many who are used to text speak, don't read books, and are otherwise conditioned to expect "instant information" (and instant gratification) by YouTube, Google, etc.  

Whether that's "good" or "bad", I'll leave that to others to ponder.  

Just writing this makes me feel old.

Having said that, a lot of reviews leave me wanting for more and/or wishing they'd get to the point.  Sometimes I'm interested in the first few paragraphs of the review that talk about the design and implementation of the technology being covered.  Other times I skip ahead to the listening impressions, and sometimes I go right to the conclusion.  Most reviews are structured in a way that you can do that pretty easily.

It's also important to take into consideration that most of the publications are sponsored by many of the companies whose products are being reviewed, so there's almost no way that the review can be completely unbiased. 

There are those rare occasions where you see a product get a negative review, or where one or two distinct flaws are highlighted, but more often than not we're offered "it doesn't do ________ as well as some, but...".

I only read reviews in-depth when it's for an item I'm considering purchasing, and then I look for specific comments about sound quality and functionality that matter to me as well as comparisons to other products that I'm familiar with.  I also try to read between the lines where something may be glossed over or they're being polite.

At the end of the day, we all hear things differently and have different frames of reference.  We all have inherent biases as well.