John Atkinson once advised that a good equipment review should fulfill three functions: To inform, to entertain, and to guide a purchase decision.
- Inform: What’s the speaker enclosure made of? What’s the DAC chipset used? How readily is the tonearm’s VTA adjusted? That kind of thing. Also, explanations from a manufacturer as to why the product’s design team made the decisions they did.
- Entertain: The review is well-written and fun to read.
- Guide a potential purchase: By reading a comprehensive review of the component from someone who has lived with it for months, a potential customer can decide if a product is worthy of further investigation.
"Context," in terms of other, similar products? That can be irresponsible and disrespectful of audio consumers who are capable of creating their own rankings based on their sonic priorities, as well as new product reviews. TAS makes plenty of recommendations—Editors’ Choice, Golden Ears, Buyers Guides, etc. But making a significant audio purchase isn’t like buying a dorm refrigerator after reading a survey of ten models in Consumer Reports.
We want to help you devise a short list of products, winnowed down from a larger number, we’d hope, from reading our reviews. But TAS is not going to tell you that Server A gets an A-minus while Server B gets a B-plus—and thus Server A is "better." That doesn’t serve anyone’s interest. You’re just going to have to hear it yourself, if you’ve decided you are seriously considering a new product covered in he magazine.
Andrew Quint
Senior writer
The Absolute Sound
