Honesty of the Reviewers

@rok2id

the final arbiter of fidelity is the listener.

The listener is the final arbiter of the decision to buy or not.

Fidelity can be measured.

Fidelity being identified as the degree to which the signal is faithful to the original signal.

Beautifully spelt out.

I hope Miller appreciates that things have changed somewhat since his last tenure here.

If any of you Audiophiles really desired honesty in reviews / reviewers, you would not have destroyed Julian Hirsch and Stereo Review.

All it takes to be a reviewer these days is to ask, what is the MSRP? The higher the MSRP, the mo’ better it must be. Also, knowing a few nonsensical words to describe things helps.

My favorite, "it’s a nice well rounded amplifier, but it’s not built for anger." (what hifi)

I’m not familiar with either Julian Hirsch or Gordon J Holt but their stories seem to match with what happened in UK reviewing.

It basically went from information to entertainment.

You only need to look at YouTube to see which is more popular.

I’m definitely old school in this regard and Hirsch sounds like the one I’d put my confidence in.

@grislybutter

I wholeheartedly agree with you in regard to reviews. They are merely entertainment, and often not even that.

The funny thing about these youtubers is how much they talk about themselves.

Since the days of Milton Erickson his work in hypnosis has been increasingly used as a sales technique.

I guess some of these reviewers believe they actually have a personality. There were quite a few DJs I recall who had similar issues.

[Ericksonian hypnosis is based on 3 principles –

To help someone, you have to empathise with the person and establish a connection (we now call this ‘rapport building’). Otherwise, the person would not trust you have the intention or the ability to help them.

To access the unconscious mind, you have to distract the conscious. He achieved this using a variety of techniques.

Indirect suggestions have a greater likelihood of being accepted by the unconscious and helping the person make natural, sustainable changes.]

@westcoastaudiophile,

I apologize for my jaded attitude towards it all.  I cannot remember all the dragons(noise, distortion etc) I have encountered since I started almost 60 years ago.  A few were slain, primarily in the tape recording arena, most were just tamed.  Some just sort of disappeared by themselves.  JITTER, TIM, and SLEW RATE come to mind.  On day they were all the rage, the next day they were never discussed again.  And some just made a come-back, warts and all.  LPs.

The whole industry reminds me of what a British news reporter once said concerning electronics, "we all just sit here like knots on a log waiting for the next American Gadget that we can't live without."

Cheers

@rok2id

Well there certainly was something romantic about analogue tape.

With 2 inch tape at a decent speed the results have probably never been surpassed.

Even in this age of digital recording some studios still use tape for the odd recording. This is despite its issues of tracking, maintenance, wear and tear etc.

Perhaps not everyone is convinced by the effectiveness of all the various so-called analogue sounding digital plug-ins?

Perhaps that’s what the history of audio is really teaching us, perhaps what the reviewers should be saying is that things are changing constantly, but not always for the better.

Well there certainly was something romantic about analogue tape.

Sure was.  I still have my Nakamichi 700 and RX505.  They could be placed in an art gallery.

what the reviewers should be saying is that things are changing constantly, but not always for the better.

They should, but they won't.  Everyone has an agenda.

Cheers

"Well there certainly was something romantic about analogue tape"

-practical too, (too) many of sound tracks we run, original or remixed, are originated from studio tapes