Example of a piece o’ crap, useless review

@soix - Really, Part Time Audiophile as an example of good reviews? Their stated policy is to NOT publish a bad review. The puff pieces I’ve read on their site goes far beyond hagiography and would make even the most shameless fan boys blush. No measurements at all. IMHO, that site is the biggest joke of all reviewers.

@ghdprentice - I respectfully disagree that it would be in no ones best interest to publish a bad review. The purpose of using measurements should be to confirm the published specifications are accurate; what we are witnessing now in the absence of verifiable measurements are wild claims by mfrs that defy logic and known principles of physics and electronics without any accountability for stretching the truth,or in some cases, just making things up out of whole cloth. The turntable industry is especially rife with this problem exactly for that reason: no independent measurements. The major magazines apparently have testing capabilities as they do very analytical testing of amps and speakers but for some reason, they take what ever specs the turntable mfrs publish as gospel (they do add a disclaimer such as "according to the mfr, blah blah blah" which they assume gets them off the hook). I think what is needed is to resurrect the Consumer Reports model where the reviewers do a complete tear down of the product to comment on its construction, capabilities and deficiencies including detailed measurements of its performance as well as operational and listening tests.

I doubt that will happen. In the mean time, a major "tell" for me is how a mfr responds to questions about their claims; if they are transparent and engaging, especially if they provide actual measurements, I have more confidence in their specs. If they deflect or hide behind "we only care about how it sounds" or "it’s secret sauce and we can’t tell you" then one has reason to doubt what they say.

Another way to look at it is this: If a mfr publishes a spec and it is reasonable or close to the median for that type of product, it shouldn’t draw suspicion and shouldn’t be difficult to prove if challenged. But when a spec is orders of magnitude better than anything else in its class, it begs for an explanation. A mfr should WELCOME any challenge as a chance to prove it and draw further attention to their ground breaking product. Making outlandish claims then running away from anyone challenging those claims is sure sign that something isn’t right.

I actually enjoyed reading it although I wouldn't call it a review.  TAS shouldn't have marked it as a review on the page.  More of a moment with newly available gear. Not particularly informative except in a home shopping network kind of way. 

I did find it extremely useful, though, in his recommendation of Blind Guardian. As soon as everyone is awake in the house I plan to load up the speakers with that one! 

I lost all respect for TAS about 12 years ago when they posted a 4 part series on digital audio that insisted that copying a FLAC file from one HDD to another degraded quality.  That was among about 25 other conclusions that were laughable then and heresy now. It just showed their editorial standards were low.

The irony with audio reviews is that everyone hears differently.  A piece of audio gear that sounds good to one person may not sound good to another.

@jimmyblues1959 Exactly.  And this is why doing product comparisons in a review is so important.  When a reviewer just shares what he thinks about a product in isolation (as TAS habitually does) we’re only getting his take based on his ears.  But when the product is compared to something else we get a sense of relative differences, which I find adds very important context that can help us as readers form a clearer perspective of the sound of the review product regardless of how the reviewer hears things.  In other words, a comparison acts like a check and balance on the reviewer’s individual opinion and provides for a much more approachable and ultimately more useful review for the reader.  However, if you’ve read a reviewer long enough you get a sense of how he hears so you can compensate somewhat for his biases and still possibly glean some useful information out of the review, but this is still no substitute for doing a legit product comparison IMO.

@lewm wrote:

Also, "I did notice that a record brush slows everything down considerably, which was a minor annoyance." That ought not to be happening with the Roadrunner/Condor/Eclipse motor system up and running. Something is off.

This is misconception on the part of the reviewer.  The Condor/RR corrects for speed drift over time, it cannot adjust for the amount of drag that is applied with a record brush.  All belt drive tables will have this phenomenon due to belt creep.  Even the most powerful direct drive tables will loose speed synch if enough drag is applied.  None of this should happen while the stylus is in the groove.

In fact, one of the techniques that the Condor uses is NOT to apply correction in the presence of "unusual" amounts of drag; if we did, the speed would suddenly shoot up when the record brush is removed and would take longer to come back down to normal.  By not applying correction, the speed will slow while the brush is applied but will quickly return to normal as soon as the brush is removed.

Really, Part Time Audiophile as an example of good reviews?  Their stated policy is to NOT publish a bad review.  The puff pieces I've read on their site goes far beyond hagiography and would make even the most shameless fan boys blush.  No measurements at all.

@phoenixengr Point well taken.  Truth be told I haven’t read PTA reviews in a while but used to like his reviews back when he was on his own, so I probably shouldn’t have included them cause I’m not very familiar with their current reviews/writing staff.  Thanks for the redirect.