Reviewers equipment

So you think money is the judging criteria for Audio, if so then the 'audiofool' label fits .......... You do realize that TAS for example is nothing more than lifestyle magazine anymore.

The top race car drivers don't own the cars, the best recording engineers are hired to work in different studios with different equipment. I don't think ownership is a requisite but rather a communicable sense of aesthetic along with developed skill sets. That's my view in a nutshell.

It's all about the ability to master tools of one's trade.

Take the lowly box of pencils. Yes this is a sketch by Dirk Dzirmizky.

I don't see why not at least within the acoustic and electrical limitations of the review environment. I think we're talking about two things here really. The ability to write what he thinks and the ability to set a system up.

Let's disregard the writing part for a moment for the sake of this discussion. For any person, not just reviewers, the reference isn't the gear but rather the mental map of what sounds really good to us. The skill is required when it comes to getting performance that is consistent with what we want to hear. What I may own correlates with what I want to hear for sure. It is the basis upon which I selected and purchased them. However, what I own may simply be limited by how much I can afford to spend on the gear and the room. What I own is simply my personal limit. That's not to say, and I have done this, borrow some kit from a store and set it up so it betters my "reference system" by getting me closer to what I ultimately envision. It just sucks when you do that knowing you have to send it back .

Prior to diving really deep into audiophile land, I set up sound reinforcement for small concerts, raves, restaurants, bars, dance clubs. As a dealer I've set up many systems where perhaps only a couple of components came from our stable. I'm not even an expert. What I do have is the ability to communicate with my clients to deliver their requirements and the basic skills to work with what I have on hand to get results they can be satisfied with. When doing it for myself, I'm lucky enough to know what I like. A lot of people are still in the process of defining that for themselves. The difficulty with being a reviewer, I imagine, wouldn't be so much getting good sound but communicating my baseline and my biases within the context of the piece under review in both an informative and interesting way. I do find that the reviewers most read clearly define those priorities. Whether the reviewer's sonic priorities are consistent with our own to me is irrelevant to a great degree. What is important to me is that they provide us with what perspective they are coming from. I believe it is their editor's job to make sure the gear goes to the right guy. If I were an editor for example, I'm not sending power hungry speakers to my resident SET guy or a Turntable and Arm to my digital guy. I would at least make sure the piece under review would at least work properly. As for getting the "best" perhaps not but they should be able to at least get a sense of the potential.

Now are there severely challenged reviewers out there? I'm pretty sure there are. What I don't see is how lack of ownership rather than lack of experience makes them lousy.

jep123 said:

(...) If not, how can we "trust" what they are writing? Well, "trust" is maybe not the correct term here, but you know what I mean. (...)

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IMHO you can not "trust" passively in any review. You must understand the reviewer system, his references, his preferences, his background and even friendships, and then critically look at the review. And then remember that these are individual opinions, or worst case, sometimes collective not really independent findings. Unless you critically merge it with other opinions and your own experience the review is useless.

And be prepared for the fact that less than 5% of what you read will be really useful.

microstrip said:

IMHO you can not "trust" passively in any review. You must understand the reviewer system, his references, his preferences, his background and even friendships, and then critically look at the review. And then remember that these are individual opinions, or worst case, sometimes collective not really independent findings. Unless you critically merge it with other opinions and your own experience the review is useless.

And be prepared for the fact that less than 5% of what you read will be really useful.

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If that 5% happens to be awareness, then its already been very useful. I do agree with most of what you say however. What one reads always differs greatly from what one experiences.

jep123 said:

But can you really get the most out of the equipment under review ( f.ex. a very good and (normally) expensive set of speakers) with a source/amplification that clearly does not manage to perform in the same league as the speakers beeing tested?

JP

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OMG ........I don't even now where to begin with this, but I'll try...........

Ok, this is the 'What's Best Forum', I clearly understand that but you have obviously consumed too much of the 'kool-aid'. There is no 'best', not in speakers , source or amplification. Do you understand that and besides there are plenty of source / amplification combinations that cost well below the level you're trying to play up to that perform equally.

My God, it's not like the reviewers are utilizing a 'Rad Shack' receiver from the seventies !

"formal reviewers" are so yesterday..these days , what with the internet and all..everyone is a reviewer.

twitch said:

You do realize that TAS for example is nothing more than lifestyle magazine anymore.

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And Stereophile isn't?

microstrip said:

IMHO you can not "trust" passively in any review. You must understand the reviewer system, his references, his preferences, his background and even friendships, and then critically look at the review. And then remember that these are individual opinions, or worst case, sometimes collective not really independent findings. Unless you critically merge it with other opinions and your own experience the review is useless.

And be prepared for the fact that less than 5% of what you read will be really useful.

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Amen to that. And it becomes even more convoluted when the reviewer continues to change his view of the audio world (e.g. JV on speakers).

When I was much more active in acquiring new gear, I would use the recommendations in TAS/Stereophile as starting points (even when they were both much better magazines prior to the advertising money being part of the equation). For example, if both magazines, liked speaker A, then I would at least actively consider Speaker A (and, of course, go listen). And as stated above, these are just opinions from someone who (allegedly) has superior listening/evaluation skills.

As I was writing this, I had a flashback to a review in Stereophile (almost 20 years ago). This reviewer (Lewis Lipnick) was reviewing some ginormous B&W Matrix 800 Speakers that were slightly over 6 feet tall .... in a tiny room with 7 foot ceilings. That kind of review (even considering Lipnick played music professionally) is just plain meaningless in my opinion ... and completely unfair to the speakers under review. The attached review does not show the photos of his room, which I very vividly recall originally.

audioguy said:

And Stereophile isn't?

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while I never said in wasn't at least John Atkinson applies some science and real world measurements to the various components being reviewed. But I do understand that the audiofool community enjoys the pretty pictures and most of the nonsensical writing that lavishes over a pair of 20k speaker wires !

Considering among the most expensive products you havd things that sound fantastic, and things that sound terrible... The price seems pretty irrelevent except for when it applies to what you are interested in.

Now, matching the gear is an important factor. Without that you will have problems and may not be able to do justice to a review.

But many reviewers have a small arsenal of avaliable gear to swap around, some theirs, some other review gear. The stuff that is theirs is often hand selected by them because it was top notch irrespective of price.

It is not like you get more impressive numbers as you climb the dollar ladder, sometimes it is the opposite. Which is another reason why I don't think a reviewer has the need to have matching $ figures.

Even if a reviewer could benefit from same better speakers to go with an amp review, we are generally talking diminshing returns so the review should still be 90% of what is going to be heard.

Now I suppose it is possible to have gear so far out of class that it is silly, but I have never seen that. For example you wouldn't use Elac UB5's as the sole speaker to review Thrax's latest class A monoblocks. But there are plenty of worthy speakers under the price of Thrax's that would work great. In many ways the real trick to reviewing is being familiar with the associated equipment. That allows you to know what is going on, and understand the difference between short-comings of associated equipment or the reviewed piece, knowing which is which.

From the reviewers' rooms thread, the rooms seem to be more of a constraint than the equipment.

A positive is that since a reviewer has various equipment go through, he does not get emotionally attached, which many audiophile owners seem to. Yet, we will never really know what some reviewers really think, while I can ping a guy who sold off his equipment and ask him what he thought of it in retrospect.

Rodney Gold said:

"formal reviewers" are so yesterday..these days , what with the internet and all..everyone is a reviewer.

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I agree.....

Rodney Gold said:

"formal reviewers" are so yesterday..these days , what with the internet and all..everyone is a reviewer.

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Amen to that. Some are certainly better than others. As I think about it, almost every major audio (or video) purchase I have made over the last many years has been a direct result of on-line data acquisition/reviews. NONE from a "formal" audio review. In fact, every piece of equipment (cables, room treatment, room design, racks, speakers, amps, processors, etc) in my room has been acquired via that information channel.

Not only did the internet provide great information on specific products, the place I auditioned my speakers was a guy's home (whom I had "met" on one of the audio forums) and flew to Philadelphia to hear them. I purchased them from a dealer of, course, but had it not been for the internet, never would have heard of them or heard them !!!

JackD201 said:

The top race car drivers don't own the cars, the best recording engineers are hired to work in different studios with different equipment. I don't think ownership is a requisite but rather a communicable sense of aesthetic along with developed skill sets. That's my view in a nutshell.

It's all about the ability to master tools of one's trade.

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I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. The exposure to a truly hifi system (which many get attending the numerous tradeshows) is key to understanding what they are missing in their own systems if they do not have the space or money to own similar. Owning the flagship stuff is not a pre-requisite to be able to review great gear

Then if the reviewer treats their room well that is another huge indication of competency. I think the recent reviewers rooms thread is a good indication of how many do not and the room is just as important as what goes in.

The biggest cues of whether you can trust the actual review come from the music section (at least for me). I will play the music referenced in the review and listen to see if I agree with the descriptions of the reviewer.

Believe High Fidelity said:

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. The exposure to a truly hifi system (which many get attending the numerous tradeshows) is key to understanding what they are missing in their own systems if they do not have the space or money to own similar. Owning the flagship stuff is not a pre-requisite to be able to review great gear

Then if the reviewer treats their room well that is another huge indication of competency. I think the recent reviewers rooms thread is a good indication of how many do not and the room is just as important as what goes in.

The biggest cues of whether you can trust the actual review come from the music section (at least for me). I will play the music referenced in the review and listen to see if I agree with the descriptions of the reviewer.

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I have found that the need for room treatment strongly depends on the construction materials of the room and the directivity of the speaker system. The more controlled the directivity, the less room interaction to begin with. I have used highly directive speakers in essentially untreated rooms and got stellar results. The materials of the room (concrete block) help with this as well I have found...windows cause big problems with wide dispersion speakers...particularly if it is at a primary reflection point.

There have been very few rooms I have been in that do not need to be treated and then of course it depends on your sound preference. However most of the rooms I visit do and really bad