I’m most surprised by MC’s statement about reading as being a better method than listening. I’ve read an awful lot of his posts and that seems to go against his usual advice - that being to use your ears.
Good catch. In a perfect world everyone would home audition and it is incredible what you can do that way. In the beginning I had the good luck to be taken in and mentored by one of if not the best audiophiles and dealers around. Stewart was the proverbial quality dealer who had selected all the best high value components and knew them inside out.
This was back in the early 90’s, my listening room had just been built and so from the very beginning I had access to a tremendous amount of the very best gear right in my own system. It was incredible how much improvement we made with the truly astounding part being how everything he had not only sounded a lot better but cost LESS than what I had!
The only problem with all this is what happens when Stewart retires and I lose my connection? This happened about 20 years ago and if I had stuck with only buying what I can first hear I would have been screwing myself out of access to all the very best stuff. I take this way too seriously to ever allow that to happen.
The whole time of course I would read reviews, just not that seriously because I had my crutch, my ringer, my pinch hitter. With him gone I had to get a lot smarter about it.
So here’s what I did, and you can do it too. I know what qualities I like, what led me to get what I have in the first place. Looking around at what I have, I know what each does well and what each could maybe do better. A lot of this comes from more or less constant tweaking. Tweaks and mods reveal way more than a lot of people seem to think. You learn so much from even something as simple as moving stuff around.
So I use what I already have as a sort of Rosetta Stone. You know the story. They find some new language, no one understands a word of it. Just a bunch of symbols utterly without meaning. Just like reading a review of some component you never heard written by some reviewer you never met. Is this starting to sound familiar? Then one day someone uncovers the Rosetta Stone, a rock with the same unfamiliar words but this time including some we do know! Through careful study we learn the new words until gradually we are able to read a whole new language.
Got it? You already have your Rosetta Stone. You have whatever it is that you have. Even if you have nothing you start building your own Rosetta Stone by going to a few stores or friends and comparing a few things. Soon as you know what one thing sounds like to you that is the key to eventually understanding what something completely different sounds like to someone else you never met.
It just takes time to build up this knowledge base. But that is way better than the alternative, taking guesses trying things at random, which is exactly what asking around here will get you. No kidding. Scroll up. Someone literally recommended throwing darts. I rest my case.
There are a few tips I can give you. First and foremost, know thyself. What kind of listener are you? If you’re a measurebator be honest, embrace the suck, and take no prisoners. Seek out all the John Atkinson Approved gear. I hear Tekton DI is the best he ever measured, so you can probably do pretty well even this way. Or if on the other hand you are into the heart and soul of music and listen for catharsis then you will want to pay special attention to when people say they were moved to tears, swept away, lost in the music.
You can probably guess which one I am. Knowing your reviewer is almost as important as knowing yourself. Some clown around here thinks Michael Fremer is my hero. Fremer is a good reviewer but not because we share the same taste in, well anything, but because I know where Fremer is coming from. He gives me enough information to know what he likes and doesn’t. So that is another tip, you can learn from everyone even those with different taste and style. It is all down to what you read for and how you read them.
None of this is easy. I do firmly believe though there is so much great gear out there where the only practical way of finding it is to rely on other people’s ears that this is worth the effort.
