When a Reviewer "likes" something

I'm now at the age of having read reviews longer than many of the writers today have been writing them. To me it's kind of off-putting that reviewers as a group just simply don't take a meaningful or the proper amount of time to fully come to grips with the particular product they are reviewing. Very often they take no more than a month to listen and evaluate and then only jot down a few of the sonic highlights (while leaving the negatives to be either glossed over or completely ignored...or confined to practical matters as opposed to sonics). I usually find them to be not worth much more than the grain of salt I end up having to take them with...and a preponderance of them on the same product is of little help. To me it's too often as if NO pro writer will tell you flat out what's truly wrong with a component's sonics, even if it's apparent and especially, it seems to me, when it can amount to a flaw. And, I think, that if they see that they can rationalize that there's no point in doing so for us, then any hope of putting things into perspective for us seems to go right out the window and...voila, we exist in what I consider to be a culture of all positive reviews - EVERY reviewer likes EVERY product they've reviewed and somehow there are no bad products (that is, there is at least SOMEthing to like about every product, right?). I suppose I suspect part of the problem is that the fix may at least require a certain degree of comparing equipment to other equipment - something that I myself find perfectly valid in this hobby, despite there being the so-called "acid test" of comparing to live music. Knowing how a piece of gear performs compared to other pieces can be of considerable value, I think, especially to intermediate-and-up hobbyists. For my own money, it's a person's *experience* in this hobby that counts the most - not simply their judgment 'yea' or 'nea', but their *evaluation* of the gear. More evidence from pro writers on their willingness to spend that much time and patience overall and less 'being of help' in the most generic of terms possible is what I'd rather see. Not getting bogged down in minutiae either - just a comparatively informed view of the particular and overall relevance of the equipment involved would do nicely...one based on both its strengths AND its flaws. From a writing standpoint, it may be trickier to write about the negatives without looking like you're condemning the component, but I feel like that can and should be done. Isn't that the sort of thing they bothered to learn how to write for in the first place? I still DO read reviews on occasion, but I no longer put all that much stock in the tributes involved, but when it comes to the performance flaws I reread between the lines a dozen times or more to try (sometimes in vain, for reading's sake) to arrive at the truth of the degree of negative sonic performance that I have to believe the writer may well be only hinting at. Good OP. I realize you may only be talking about the irritatingly pointless trend of pro writers blithely "liking" any and every random piece of gear, but to me it goes deeper than that, I suppose. Regards. John

Do they ever NOT like anything?

FrankC

+1 to what Rrog said, it means nothing to me. I take anything any salesman says with a grain of salt. Sales, that is their job to convince you to buy their product. Don't be fooled into thinking that the glossy rags have your best interest in mind, they are purely sales literature, nothing more.

Do your homework and listen with your own ears. Don't buy the hype. Speaking of hype though, one thing great reviews do is keep resale values high. This may be a good or bad thing, depending on whether you are a buyer or seller. I have no problem buying something I like at a steep discount because some reviewer didn't care for it. :)

There ARE negative reviews out there, even accidental ones like the embarrassing D'Agostine meltdown debacle...two of my fave Brit mags, Hifi Choice and Hifi News have a seemingly more balanced approach, including a "likes and dislikes" blurb, along with stuff put through a "listening panel" of somewhat sophisticated panelists. I still read Absolute and S'Phile out of habit, and other than feeling some of these dudes have very questionable musical tastes, I take it well salted.

IMO, this OP touches on some very complicated questions. That is, how can one obtain reliable information about a product, be the source of informatin be from reviewers or B&M sales people??

I'll digress just briefly on the early days. At one time, mags like Stereophile did NOT accept advertising, e.g., J. Gordon Holt's Stereophile "booklet" back in the 70s. Nonreliance on advertisers certainly "biased" the reviewer to be "non-biased" (pun intended).

Not so today. Yes, on a very infrequent occassion, I have read a review that pointed out "some" unfavorable aspects or deficiencies about a piece of equipment. But very infrequently. So, as the other folks said above, I'll read the reviews, but take them with a grain of salt.

But the salt doesn't stop there. I've said this before, B&M outlets sell what they have. And there aren't too many retail dealers around who carry, or can afford to carry, a wide range of brands for comparison. And even if you listen to something of interest, how meaninful is it when one considers system synergy and how the piece will sound in YOUR house on your rig??

I've also mentioned this before, I haven't been in a B&M store for as long as I can rememeber. However, I have swung some telephone deals on equipment that I wanted because I couldn't find the gear on the "Gon."

Bottom line for me: it has taken me a long time to assemble my rig -- from cartridge, TT, phono pre, CDP, linestage, amp and speakers. Many a purchase has been made off the Gon, tried, then resold if it doesn't ring my bell. So far, I've been fortunate that churing gear hasn't cost me too much.

Have I made the best possible choices? Would my picks make it on "The Best of [____]" OPs? Haven't a clue.

Having said all that, I do read A'gon everyday out of pure interest. I take member comments quite seriously, especially when I read other members echo similar comments. Right now, I've kick started someone else's OP on the ARC Ref 150. It's a piece that's on my long range acqusition list. Btw, based on member comments, I upgraded my ARC Ref 5 linestage to the SE version. So far, I'm not disappointed.

That's about all I can say -- which I guess is a lot. Just a few final comments. At least with ARC gear, I DO believe there's a natural synergy and benefit staying all ARC. Also, at the expense of starting another speaker war, I think one of the best speaker values on the market is the Paradigm Sig 8 (v2 or v3 with beryllium dome tweeters). But be careful -- they are not very tube friendly. They like high current SS amps. However, I think my ARC VS-115 is pushing through ok.

Regards,

Bruce