The reviewer's reviewing system.

[DaveyF]

I recently had an interesting discussion with one of the better known manufacturer's reps. The discussion revolved around how the rep was surprised at how many weak- and in his opinion colored systems, are being used by several well known reviewer's.
Today, I was looking at the new issue of S'phile and noticed that TJN's system was very....shall we say, entry level. OTOH, there are certainly a few reviewer's who have superb systems...like our friend, Mikey F.
Question that the rep posed to me was, does the public realize that the reviewer that just wrote this lengthy description of the gear under review,may not have heard the qualities, or lack of, the piece under review? This, due to the inability of the upstream or ancillary gear. ( this applied to the speakers that he had submitted for review and subsequently received a 'luke' warm review...due we both felt, to the poor room- and more importantly the colored and fairly inaccurate upstream gear that the reviewer uses as a reference!)
Conversely, perhaps if a reviewer is reviewing inexpensive entry level gear, a strong argument could be made that the ancillary gear used for the review needs to be of commensurate ability/price to the gear under review. This would be the argument that TJN could use in his review for S'phile. Question is, are they going to have him review gear that is far more resolving? Should he perhaps then disclose that the gear he uses in his system is far from the highest resolution.
My questions are, do we believe that a reviewer for a high end magazine should have a certain level of gear/system in order to review high end gear?
How important is this factor? Do they need to have gear like Mikey F or Jacob Heilbrun to qualify for the job, or is the gear that TJN and JA and AD have as their references sufficient?

 

[Purite Audio]

I would say it is more important for the reviewer to have a well sorted room, some of the reviewers room's I have been in have been completely untreated, one in particular, has far to much HF, which I am certain influences his choice of component.
Keith.

 

[DaveyF]

I would say it is more important for the reviewer to have a well sorted room, some of the reviewers room's I have been in have been completely untreated, one in particular, has far to much HF, which I am certain influences his choice of component.
Keith.

Agree with that, Keith. Some of the reviewer's rooms that I have seen photos of, would lead one to seriously question their reviewing acumen. ( besides the equipment that resides in said room). One fellow in particular comes to mind, had a lot of glass windows behind his gear and his room was very small. I cannot imagine how a system could sound good in such a space.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Agree with that, Keith. Some of the reviewer's rooms that I have seen photos of, would lead one to seriously question their reviewing acumen. ( besides the equipment that resides in said room). One fellow in particular comes to mind, had a lot of glass windows behind his gear and his room was very small. I cannot imagine how a system could sound good in such a space.

Yeah, but wasn't he a Class A reviewer or something like that. Obviously that self-appointed designation has to carry some weight.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I do feel that the SOTA systems I have been fortunate enough to listen to recently provide truly helpful perspective when evaluating more modest components. I do not think that reviewers have to have the highest level components to review gear, but I think they should at least have been exposed to SOTA components.

 

[Andre Marc]

Yeah, but wasn't he a Class A reviewer or something like that. Obviously that self-appointed designation has to carry some weight.

 

[ddk]

I recently had an interesting discussion with one of the better known manufacturer's reps. The discussion revolved around how the rep was surprised at how many weak- and in his opinion colored systems, are being used by several well known reviewer's.
Today, I was looking at the new issue of S'phile and noticed that TJN's system was very....shall we say, entry level. OTOH, there are certainly a few reviewer's who have superb systems...like our friend, Mikey F.
Question that the rep posed to me was, does the public realize that the reviewer that just wrote this lengthy description of the gear under review,may not have heard the qualities, or lack of, the piece under review? This, due to the inability of the upstream or ancillary gear. ( this applied to the speakers that he had submitted for review and subsequently received a 'luke' warm review...due we both felt, to the poor room- and more importantly the colored and fairly inaccurate upstream gear that the reviewer uses as a reference!)
Conversely, perhaps if a reviewer is reviewing inexpensive entry level gear, a strong argument could be made that the ancillary gear used for the review needs to be of commensurate ability/price to the gear under review. This would be the argument that TJN could use in his review for S'phile. Question is, are they going to have him review gear that is far more resolving? Should he perhaps then disclose that the gear he uses in his system is far from the highest resolution.
My questions are, do we believe that a reviewer for a high end magazine should have a certain level of gear/system in order to review high end gear?
How important is this factor? Do they need to have gear like Mikey F or Jacob Heilbrun to qualify for the job, or is the gear that TJN and JA and AD have as their references sufficient?

IMO its more important for the reader to know the components involved rather than some arbitrary A/B/C class rating that has no consensus. The information is valuable for better context only if the reader is familiar with the associated equipment otherwise its not going to be helpful either way.

david

 

[Andre Marc]

Yeah, but wasn't he a Class A reviewer or something like that. Obviously that self-appointed designation has to carry some weight.

Wait, wait..I think the term that was used was "Tier 1". For the record.

 

[Barry2013]

For some time now I have been very cautious about reviewers unless I know what their systems are.
Most reviewers do give you that information and sometimes details of the room, Their reviews have more credibility to me and the ones with modest equipment I treat with caution.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Wait, wait..I think the term that was used was "Tier 1". For the record.

Or was it Pier 1?

 

[nc42acc]

One persons idea of SOTA is another persons junk. This is proven daily on this forum with the heated member arguments in support of their personal ideas. I say take each reviewers comments with a grain of salt, find a dealer who has a liberal try before you buy policy and create your own SOTA system.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

it seems obvious that most of the longer term print reviewer's systems and preferences are well known and commonly factored into any review perception. 1 + 1 = 2. pretty simple.

I view them no differently than any poster here, or on any forum. whatever is written gets put in a context based on my knowledge of the writer's system and history of commenting. how can this not be how it goes? which, of course, causes much conflict when strong opinions are not attached to full disclosures.

so a manufacturer who has an issue with reviewer's systems simply has to find one who measures up. it might be in an online magazine......

these days I pay much more attention to listeners known to me than any reviewer. Fremer maybe being the exception as one I do closely read and value. not without my own opinion on his biases.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Wait, wait..I think the term that was used was "Tier 1". For the record.

yes, yes....that's the one...Tier 1 Reviewer!

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Or was it Pier 1?

Could be...he certainly did jump off the plank!

 

[Andre Marc]

Or was it Pier 1?

I think that is how the room was decorated...

 

[DaveyF]

I think that is how the room was decorated...

Actually, I wasn't talking about the King of all a'fools..er, I mean a'philes. Instead, one of his disciples...

 

[JackD201]

As an acoustician myself I always find it funny how people can look at pictures of a room and make snap assumptions. One must remember that lenses can be very deceiving when it comes to translating proportions. As everyone should know the behavior of reflected sound is not just affected by the qualities of the boundary surface but also by the distance travelled by the sound wave. Furthermore, a picture only shows a small part of a room. One might say, oh no bass traps so it must be boomy but in fact the room might be opening up elsewhere preventing bass build up, something also very reliant on the levels listened at. For all you know the guy's got a door or some windows open somewhere.

Treatment can be done in many ways including the use of every day items as everything including the listener and his clothing has an absorptive coefficient at differing frequencies. Make no mistake, even diffusers which are typically made with dense materials have absorptive properties.

The most reliable way to judge a space if you do not have the building and ID plans to extrapolate the tracing and RT-60 characteristics of the room is to be in it.

 

[cjf]

One thing I've always been curious about is if you take any piece of gear that has been positively reviewed previously and its subsequent measured performance has also shown to be very good irregardless of its price then is their any reason to believe that it couldn't successfully be used with other gear which may cost many multiples more then it does?

If you take a PreAmp for example that is the $4-6k range and its measured performance was said to be "beyond reproach" or "it doesn't get any better then this" then why do folks think it's compromised or wrong when plugged into say a $50-100k amplifier and similar priced speakers? If said PreAmp has better measured performance then other PreAmps costing $30-50k then why not use it?

 

[dallasjustice]

Many reviews happen in hotel rooms. I couldn't think of a worse listening environment. The reviewers who claim to hear differences between components, other than speakers, after listening at a show only demonstrate their foolishness.

Didn't Harman test some reviewers and determine they have among the worst listening skills? The makes sense to me. Most reviewers don't invest in room setup and acoustics. Instead their focus is on boxes. The boxes are free and are constantly change.

John Atkinson has one of the better reviewer rooms. His room has a huge resonanant peak at 35hz and very short RT60. At least he posts plots. I think Doug Schneider posted good room measurements. I don't think one can know everything about how a room colors the reviewer's system, but it's very helpful to know this stuff.

 

[JackD201]

Didn't Harman test some reviewers and determine they have among the worst listening skills?

No they didn't. That was inferred here. Test results showed that they in fact had the same order of preferred speakers as the trained listeners and the retailers. The variance between the three was later attributed by Toole in his video lecture to the use of the scale. The reviewers used less of the scale but the rankings were the same and actually bettered most of the groups.