Some extremely expensive commercial loudspeakers are not bad products by objective criteria, if price-performance ratio is not taken into account. They are luxury items, with their price tag completely detached from their performance as a loudspeaker, which is fine. There is a place for that and within the realms of hifi jewelry, some of these companies still seems to care about good engineering, which is nice and unfortunately not a given. One company that comes to mind could be Magico. A couple of years ago they put their new flagship speaker M9 on the market.
Not many reviews have been made of that speaker, probably because of its bulky size. People that have reviewed them all seem to suggest that this is something special, almost a paradigm shift. But wait, I think that I have heard that before, as in almost every time, some company sets assail a new topnotch expensive hifi jewelry on the market.
Some of those reviewers are recognized and well regarded, within the audio community, that is, and has probably been around the block once or twice. However, to me they often come out, as if they clearly don’t have much experience with top-notch DIY setups. Of course, reviewers have to put an angle to the product and praise it, so potential customers gain or retain the interest. But this is a clear indication, to me, that most audiophiles haven’t heard was is actually possible if you go all in, in a no compromise DIY setup.
Some have got out of the "trial-and-error pit" and endlessly component changes, while hoping to strike some luck of synergy. Instead they spent time reading what the really serious people in the industry have found out and then ended up with relatively non-commercial equipment, may indicate that they have discovered something that really pays off in the grand scheme of things of audio.
Typically, those same people also use DSP to keep track of everything, preferably set up with the help of a professional vendor with experience and a scientific approach. They find they also have significantly more control over what is going on in the setup, than what they had when they once experimented with cable changes and magical tweaks a-la such things as, for example, 6-moons love to present as almost brilliant investments.
And when you have come this far, how much do you care about testing gadgets, and then write supposedly generally valid subjective descriptions in a flowery language?
Should they still fall for the temptation and suddenly find themselves in the middle of a test of a new super tube amplifier, then they get the feeling that the language of flower poetry has no function, because first of all, it only describes one very specific situation and because what you really want to, is describing what the amplifier actually does.
But none of the readers really care about that. Strictly speaking, they only want confirmation that the amplifier they are considering has the right street cred, and we have all seen how poorly suited Amir's tests are to convey street cred.
So, maybe when these recognized, if not always liked, serious writers grows up, and we have no guarantee that that will happen, they will exchange flowery language for DSP and start listening to music too.
I think it's time to get real here and realize that in this industry there is no particularly link between well-known and serious.
To the reviewer’s defense, dealing with component replacement is a different way of dealing with hifi, than dealing with neutral electronics/dsp/tailored speakers. It would be impractical for a component-swapping reviewer to have such a tailored and fine-tuned setup. At best, he would have tested neutral amplifiers and DACs against each other, but if they sound the same, it would certainly be a boring reading. So basically reviewers engage in another discipline which not necessarily correlates with "the most credible reproduction of the music".
I don't mean that writers can't get good sound, but that when you have to deal with a lot of component switching, it sets some limits for what type of system is practical.
The reason for the skepticism/criticism I’m directing toward reviewers and their followers as a whole, is that you are constantly faced with the fact that science somehow only "thinks it knows", while those who really “know” are those who do or read a lot of tests. It's like a clique of a special elite group, for those who have “got a clue” about hifi. After all, “that is the way it is, and not what stupid science imagines”.
In the end those who think it's fun to “listen to their system” probably don't prefer the transparent variety.
I feel like I'm balancing on a knife's edge between making a point and offending someone. But then maybe the evening will be a little less boring
