What's the point of reviewing?

One review means NOTHING ...Nevermind the reviewer...

Reviews are only meaningful in their statistical numbers...

Then you compare them for ALL acoustics factors...

You decode each word associated with each factors...

Then the most important part is to read what is missing, what is not there...

The text of a review say half the story, the other half is missing or between the lines...

I applied this method for all my purchase...

I made few errors when i underestimated my own ignorance and when i fail to spot  my unidentified needs,,,Not because of the reviews analysis ...

Then BEFORE reading reviews identify your real needs...

If you read reviews without precise needs you will be tempted to upgrade foolishly most of the times...

In one word : reviewers dont matter, only the sheer numbers of reviews for a product to be ANALYSED...This method for sure is valid for well known products not obscure one...

Then there is no need even to listen to it before buying it ... Anyway i cannot and could not listen before buying...This is the reason i developed this simple but efficient method...But my field work was reading analysis... 😊

The point is well taken -- this is an extraordinarily hard thing to compare for physical reasons above and beyond the interpretive and physiological differences btw people. But, of course, conditions never need to be "identical" to be not mooted.

When reviewers are articulate, they at least give a hint about what they like and what they’re hearing. That hint serves as a clue for people who find that their tastes might align.

Cf. Why read movie reviews or restaurant reviews? Same reason -- bc we find others there who seem like us AND they describe their listening conditions and tastes to help us see if it’s close enough to even take a hint.

This has nothing to do with statistics. It's about finding people who speak our language. Whose words are music to our ears.

@mahgister is right. There is strength in numbers. Many people drawing similar conclusions and representing a decent random sample is the secret sauce. Or even just several knowledgeable sources might do it.  
 

Every piece of equipment I have bought I have auditioned in my listening space. Plenty of dealers do this. The last piece I bought was a $26,000.00 DAC. Auditioned in my system for 3 weeks. 

We dont read reviews about an amplifier the same way we read reviews about meals and movies at all ...😁😊 Acoustic concepts are not food cooking or about "taste"...Nor movie genre...

With gear components we identifies what each listener say about, dynamic, timbre, transients, soundfield imaging and soundstaging, with what kind of gear his impressions are build , what are the musical albums used , what type of room...Etc and especially we pay attention to what he does not speak about.. We put them on a paper... After each reviews we add a column...

Statistics here means only that 35 reviews analysed is better than 5....The acoustic factors at play for the analysis had nothing to do with the 35 five different personnalities who created their own reviews...( except for common place fact as : we dont analyse review of people loving heavy metal to pick a balance headphone )

The point here is that if so many DIFFERENT people with DIFFERENT taste CONVERGE in impressions about each acoustic factors then you can believe it as a PROBABLE fact...

What the tastes of a single reviewer are MEANS nothing, because we analyse each acoustic factors written ideally by 35 different people, THATS THE POINT... ...

It is evident that even if someone has the same taste as me in music it does not means that the shape of his ears, the distance between his ears, the different components he was using, and in a very different room than mine all factors that differentiate him from me will help in a lesser way for a good pick up choice of gear than analysing the highest numbers of opinions possible about bass, timbre, highs, imaging, soundstage, transients ...This is so evident that i will not go further...

But if we are lazy we can read a reviewer or two we like and if they say this is very good, we can belive it....For sure... But it is not my general idea about reviews analysis...

And opposing the "similar taste" factor to my "statistics" is preposterous, because my point of view INCLUDE even taste of the reviewers but it is not the main factor at all , acoustic factors are the main one... we can even rank reviewers by our favorable opinion about their teste... ( I generally exclude heavy metal listener opinions or electronical music)...

I pick the Sansui amplifier and my AKG K340 as i described...Complete success...