Are Hifi Reviews Flawed?

[DSJR]

You're quite right Dave, although I ought to add that Gramaphone in their golden era never reviewed a sub-standard product, aborting the review at an early stage and returning the goods. A shame really, but there you are. At least much of their back catalogue of reviews is available online now for reference.

Has anyone got a full set of HiFi Sound mags from the late sixties? HiFi Dave has a few, but not the one I want (turntable group test including the TD124, 401, G99 and TTS 3000)..

[Rare Bird]

I'll try and give the best help I can from my memories and experience, although I can't remember the details of Andre's Mayware post above, despite selling and setting up more Formula 4's than I care to remember (why do they fetch such silly money today, as there aren't many super high-compliance carts about these days?).

Cos the Mayware is the best looking & best made vintage unipivot, infact if i remember it has the lowest mass of any uni arm..I loved mine, the mid band was crystal..I've had quite a few against the rules cartridges work fine with it.

This is my old Mayware i posted on another place yonks ago, i fitted some Sonus parts to it & rewired with Cardas wire & tags, purposly made the leads a bit longer..

[Marco]

Nice one, Andre. Out of interest, which cartridges did you used to use with it?

Marco.

[Primalsea]

Is that a Mayware Formula 1 Tonearm? A while back they where a big hit on the WD forum. Apparently very good and not expensive to pick up 2nd hand.

By the way Neil great post, must have took you a while!

All this begun by me looking into a new Phono Stage. HFW wrote a interesting review on a few amps but reading them didn't help much. The winner was the obvious choice in my view. The thing was that there was no basis to work from, I just didn't know if my experience of the equipment would be the same. You could say the same for any review but if I knew the reviewer (or reviewing group) had a similar outlook to me or it was known that certain aspects the group always agreed upon I would have a much better idea where the review was coming from.

Top this with my experience being completely different to some reviews its not difficult to be come a little dismayed with it all.

[Spectral Morn]

Is that a Mayware Formula 1 Tonearm? A while back they where a big hit on the WD forum. Apparently very good and not expensive to pick up 2nd hand.

By the way Neil great post, must have took you a while!

All this begun by me looking into a new Phono Stage. HFW wrote a interesting review on a few amps but reading them didn't help much. The winner was the obvious choice in my view. The thing was that there was no basis to work from, I just didn't know if my experience of the equipment would be the same. You could say the same for any review but if I knew the reviewer (or reviewing group) had a similar outlook to me or it was known that certain aspects the group always agreed upon I would have a much better idea where the review was coming from.

Top this with my experience being completely different to some reviews its not difficult to be come a little dismayed with it all.

Hi Paul

Thank you.


I agree with you. It is quite often really hard to understand the context of a review (mainly because the context is missing), I find that more now than I did in the past, mainly I feel because a lot of published reviews don't have a beginning, middle and an end/conclusion.

I know (because I read such comments on the net) that many hate reading long reviews, and yet a long form is the only way the writer can give you the full story and all the ins and outs of the product. Short form writing gives you very little to work with. Bring back the old days I say. You should grab hold of a mid 80's issue of the Absolute sound. Three opinions, not even a photo some times, but you understood the product by the end, and the final conclusion is based on the results found in several systems. This approach spreads the chance of a mis-match/negative bias, and gives a much fuller idea of every aspect of performance set up etc.

My main pet hate is line after line of text, based on what a thing does. You can get that info in a brochure from the manufacture,r or it could be placed in a box at the end of the write up. Word count is always at risk (in the print world) so how the thing sounds to me is the most important part of the review, and in what context/system you can get the best out of it..or not as the case may be.



Regards D S D L

[Rare Bird]

Nice one, Andre. Out of interest, which cartridges did you used to use with it?

Marco.

Sorry marco been hectic at work tonight.

Very small circle of cartridges i used..Technics '205' & '207', Goldring '900IGC', Mayware cartridges all these were perfect for the Mayware & original Mission 774' i used...The odd ones which seemed to work were Denon 'DL110' & 'DL160'..nothing unusual.. I find Midband clarity is something Unipivots such as the mayware do very well.

[hifinutt]

if i see loads of reviews on a particular product mostly favourable i think there might be something worth listening to. in these days where you have to travel hundreds of miles to listen to something then it can help guide

of course it depends so much on the reviewers room and acoustics and that may not be up to much !
the review of the isolation platforms i have was in hi fi plus and when i got them i found the review was 100 % correct in every way to my ears

[jandl100]

Magazine reviews? Yep, I've read a lot in my time.

As has been mentioned, you often do have to try and read between the lines, or pick up on a seemingly minor comment that probably deliberately understates a very negative feature. E.g. I've often found that comments like "can be a little soft on some music" often actually means "dull, dull, dull".

Also I find it important to note the music used in the review - tbh, if it doesn't include classical music any review is pretty much useless to me. Different musics require different audio abilities, imho. The screechy horribleness of some kit with classical music goes unnoticed on a heavy thrash rock session or can even be regarded as an advantage!

But given a decent and relevant (to me) review one of the great things is the wide diversity of kit they cover. Even an avid box-swapper like me cannot compete with the access these guys have to potentially interesting kit.

[DSJR]

I set up many Formula 4's and as long as the damping wasn't over-done, it was a fresh, lightweight sounding product which worked extremely well with the Sonus Blue, an interesting take on the ADC XLM/ZLM ideal (these worked brilliantly too). I saw that the later arms were more massy, but had no experience of them. The Nima looks to be the current incarnation of this product...

[Marco]

Hi Jerry,

Also I find it important to note the music used in the review - tbh, if it doesn't include classical music any review is pretty much useless to me. Different musics require different audio abilities, imho.

I do agree. However, I'd also add that in my opinion classical music (especially an orchestra in full flow) is a great test for any hi-fi system.

Experience tells me that if a system can handle the challenging nature of classical music well (the demands of reproducing accurately both the harmonic/structural and tonal subtleties of instruments, and thunderous orchestral crescendos), then it will handle virtually any other genre of music with similar aplomb.

A system, however, which majors on 'false excitement factor' (usually due to deliberate voicing as such by equipment manufacturers) may sound superficially 'impressive' with rock music, but its overall limitations are often ruthlessly revealed by the demands reproducing classical music convincingly imposes on systems.

Would you agree with that?

It's kind of what you're saying, I guess, but rather somewhat in reverse!

Marco.