Are Hifi Reviews Flawed?

[hifinutt]

It's all about advertising revenue. All of the points above can be explained once you take advertising revenue to be the PRIMARY driver, and not the notional subjectr of any review magazine. It's also why they are dying. The cover date "problem" is the push to get more money from the advertisers earlier and once you move to a 13-month annual cycle it gets difficult to get back to reality. The problem is that the 13th issue never arrives A large proportion of sales of review magazines are traditionally driven by seasonal factors and Christmas purchases are of course a big part of this. Having rehashed reviews, awards and summaries allow you to push the issue to advertisers. Take advertising revenue as the movtive to anything they do, rince and repeat.

Am I being to cynical ? I prefer being known as a realist.

thats why hi fi critic is one of my favourites and has no advertising

[tfarney]

I know we all hear things differently

Actually, the bit of controlled listening testing that has been done in this area indicates that we don't hear things all that differently. Sean Olive, director of research at Karman International, has conducted pretty extensive listening tests with a variety of subjects from audiophiles and recording engineers (trained listeners) to people with little interest in hifi. While the trained listeners were a bit more discriminating, in general, preferences cut across audience types.

More research, of course, could always be done, and while we can argue all day about the validity of blind listening tests and the effects of controlled environments, it's hard to imagine how looking your precious new component dead in the eye while comparing it to the old one you haven't just invested in would actually yield more objective results. But YMMV.

Personally, I think a combination of measurement and listening tests driving reviews would revive the credibility of the hifi press. But I'm not holding my breath.

Tim

[Marco]

Welcome back, Tim. I hope you had a nice Christmas

Marco.

[tfarney]

Welcome back, Tim. I hope you had a nice Christmas

Marco.

Very nice, thanks.

Tim

[Marco]

Nice one. We did too. How are the ADM9s performing - I presume you still have them?

Marco.

[DSJR]

Hello Tim.

I think you're right - I lapped up the old reviews of the late sixties/early70's where decent technical tests were complemented by listening. That's why I'm thought of as a legacy HiFi zealot on a certain other forum known to the two of us........

For example tuners, a master source was FM modulated and fed into a tuner and the results from the tuner output compared with the source directly. Also, any technical weakness could be judged for its subjective affect.

It costs loads, probably too much, to do highly technical group tests these days and many of the very few "technical" bods in the UK seem to have too many commercial or personal interests with huge ego's to match...

[DSJR]

Nice one. We did too. How are the ADM9s performing - I presume you still have them?

Marco.

Look on the forum "that shall not be named" - it's all there in gory detail


I'm not being critical either, but I'm not going to turn the other cheek any more when someone pats me on the head for being a good but totally misguided little boy............. Nothing to do with ADM 9.1's, but there you go

[tfarney]

Nice one. We did too. How are the ADM9s performing - I presume you still have them?

Marco.

I do, and I'm enjoying them. I'm still a bit shocked sometimes at the clarity and imaging they produce. The bass is not deep, because I don't have the sub, but what is there is very well-controlled, with no boom or hangover. I'm sure those very characteristics would have them deemed "clinical" by some, but they suit me. Of course there is no rocket science there. What they do is exactly what one should expect of very well-executed active monitors of their size. What makes them exceptional is that so few are well-executed.

Tim

[tfarney]

Look on the forum "that shall not be named" - it's all there in gory detail


I'm not being critical either, but I'm not going to turn the other cheek any more when someone pats me on the head for being a good but totally misguided little boy............. Nothing to do with ADM 9.1's, but there you go

I take no issue with your legacy hifi zealotry, Dave. As I've said before, if I had the space, I'd have multiple systems, and one of them would probably end in a pair of old Altec Lansings or Klipsch (maybe even Tanoys ). I get the attraction. But given what I have, which is room for one listening space, I'll take a bright light on the warts on the worst recordings, so I can have the best of them fully revealed. YMMV and all that.

Tim

[DSJR]