Hesson11,
I tend to agree with you overall. But, I didn't mean that comment to be taken completely literal.
"What does the speaker suck at? That's what I want to know. lol."
See the lol at the end? I try, but no one ever gets my humour. Oh well, back to the issue at hand.
"While some may have characteristics that are not to my taste, remember that reviewers are ideally writing for readers with widely varied tastes, not just their own."
That's a very reasonable assumption on your part, but it's not true, more often than it is. Usually, a reviewer asks a company to review a product. They hear something in a store or at a show that they like, and that usually leads to a request. You would think that whoever the boss is at the magazine hands out the reviewers assignments, but that's not the norm. It does happen like that sometimes, but most of the time, the reviewer picks a product and then asks for permission to review it. While this is not a practice they hide, to their credit, quite often they will talk about this in the review itself, I don't think it best serves the readers. If a reviewer only picks stuff he knows he is going to like, we know how the review is going to go. For me, personally, I would like to see the reviewers take on more of a challenge. So if, for example, a reviewer doesn't like ribbon speakers, I want to see him review one. It'll make for a better comparison. I'm willing to bet that a reader will get more out of a review like that, than he will from someone who starts off already being sold on the product.
I tend to agree with you overall. But, I didn't mean that comment to be taken completely literal.
"What does the speaker suck at? That's what I want to know. lol."
See the lol at the end? I try, but no one ever gets my humour. Oh well, back to the issue at hand.
"While some may have characteristics that are not to my taste, remember that reviewers are ideally writing for readers with widely varied tastes, not just their own."
That's a very reasonable assumption on your part, but it's not true, more often than it is. Usually, a reviewer asks a company to review a product. They hear something in a store or at a show that they like, and that usually leads to a request. You would think that whoever the boss is at the magazine hands out the reviewers assignments, but that's not the norm. It does happen like that sometimes, but most of the time, the reviewer picks a product and then asks for permission to review it. While this is not a practice they hide, to their credit, quite often they will talk about this in the review itself, I don't think it best serves the readers. If a reviewer only picks stuff he knows he is going to like, we know how the review is going to go. For me, personally, I would like to see the reviewers take on more of a challenge. So if, for example, a reviewer doesn't like ribbon speakers, I want to see him review one. It'll make for a better comparison. I'm willing to bet that a reader will get more out of a review like that, than he will from someone who starts off already being sold on the product.