How to determine whether you can trust a hifi reviewers opinions

[Lee T]

WHF is a pile of bollox?

I agree, as are most mags IMO, waste of money.
WHF have even given good & bad reviews to the same gear, this is how ludicrous it is, other mags have done the same, I used to read them all years ago before I came to my senses, as an example, hifi choice once reviewed the Kimber 8pr speaker cable stating the bass was loose & flabby (how a cable can have loose bass is still a mystery to me) couple of years later, same cable praised for it's excellent bass response, variables again, complete waste of time reading them.

Cambridge Audio 640c v2 cd player, 5 star review, first class performance, relaxed, laid back, natural, smooth sounding player, same mag, 4 star review, lacklustre, too safe sounding, lacking excitement.

What hifi, same player, full on, upfront sound, full of life.
I own one, to my ears it sounds like neither review, for obvious reasons, context.

If this doesn't tell you something about reviews & reviewers then nothing will.

 

[agnes]

I used to buy HFN in past times, found Ken Kessler entertaining and enjoyed his enthusiasm and humour. The trouble was that his comments told you more about his tastes than the equipment. If something had a case designed by an Italian and had a valve in it, it was bound to sound great.

The Internet and forums like this have made magazine purchases unnecessary for me.

 

[Lee T]

Forum user reviews are better IMO, at least you have the ability to ask questions regarding their circumstances & get an idea of how something may sound in your own set up, without the person trying to sell them to you, just personal experience with a given piece of equipment.

 

[digestive]

They were right in that they were a Linn/Naim/Bada mag and all the systems they used or recommend were voiced round the very warm and bass-heavy pre-Cirkus LP12..

I seem to remember you were ‘allowed’ to have a Rega (preferably the 3) or a Dual 505 if you were totally skint and promised to get a Linn in the future, AS SOON AS YOU COULD AFFORD.
I even seem to recall Malcolm Stewart (I think) giving the Little Pink Thing and Roksan Xerxes good reviews. I don’t think Malcolm lasted long after that.

This was certainly the case when I first tried a friend’s budget Philips player in my Naim/Kan rig which was at that point very much optimised to make vinyl sound as dynamic as I could get it. The CD player sounded dreadful, just ear-bending. It wasn’t until sometime later when I was becoming increasingly irritated by the horrible quality of mid to late-80s vinyl (all too often recycled/reground) that I decided I needed a CD player and by that time the rather smooth and warm Rotel 965BX had come to the market and actually had a very similar balance to my Xerxes. I’m now a real convert and love CD.
.

Yes CD did sound awful, especially through my Mordaunt Short MS45Ti (Titanium Dome tweeters) on the end of a budget Rotel.
My current Cyrus CD sounds much better through my 72/140 (with teddy power supplies for the 72). It just does not have the same front to back stage depth and realism I get with vinyl (Xerxes). I actually collect CDs as well as Vinyl these days.

I think the point I was trying to make was that not all magazines are in it just for the money.
I have a particular soft spot for HFW, and have read it since it first came out.
Noel has done/allowed some left field (i.e. non commercial) stuff in his magazine down the years. Reviving a vintage 401 and fitting it with an SME. Now everyone is doing it of course, but back then…
Valve amps, back when hipster hadn’t discovered them.
Computer audio articles when PC’s were big beige boxes.
DIY pull out sections. e.t.c.

 

[John Phillips]

Forum user reviews are better IMO, at least you have the ability to ask questions regarding their circumstances & get an idea of how something may sound in your own set up, without the person trying to sell them to you, just personal experience with a given piece of equipment.

In principle I agree but in practice I wonder about this.

I observe that different forum users can produce vastly different reviews of the same equipment. I recently looked on various forums for reviews of equipment from the 2018 Acoustica show in Chester. I wondered at times if different forum members could possibly have been reporting on the same room, so different were the reviews I read.

I agree that questions could be asked. But I wonder if people get accustomed to a particular musical presentation without realizing it. If so they might not be able to meaningfully articulate the subjective reasons why they liked or disliked a piece of equipment in a way that might translate to another person's subjective context. So I wonder about the value of asking questions.

One could hope that professional reviewers, usually having had exposure to a wider range of equipment, might be better at articulating subjective qualities. However I am not sure I have observed that in practice. Often because (I think) even though the professional reviewer typically does try to address subjective issues, the vocabulary used is so variable that I cannot really translate it into my own context.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

Always loved HFW myself.
DIY articles.
Old world.
Loads of advertising revinue in that!
Always liked Adams (beoman) reviews.
And Noels technical breakdowns and measurements using quite a lot of the same equipment I use myself in my job.
Also a mention of Hi Fi review.
When the rest of the world was telling me how fantastic CD was they were stating it was shit compared to vinyl.
Loads of money in that!
They were right IMHO.

I enjoy reading HFW but:

1) I regret the way the DIY eventually evaporated. Ditto for the ending of being able to get excellent CDs from them.

2) I'm not a fan of NK's approach to 'digital'. To see why, have a look at

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/ddd/DirtyDigitalDelusions.html

which deals with one example of what has appeared in HFW.

3) Despite the impression HFW has often given in the past, there was not and is not an inherent-in-CD problem with low level distortion or grain. Only with badly made discs or players. Sadly, badly made discs have been produced rather more often than we'd like. But the problem here is flaws in the examples, not - as you may gathered from past issues of any magazines - due to inherent problems with digital CD.

Beyond that: more generally across all magazines, etc, I tend to be dubious about any reviews unless I can calibrate them in some way. They can be useful, but they can also mislead. Sometimes spectacularly so, as I've exampled from a case or two where I had personal knowledge. See

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/reviews/changes/1975-8.html

and

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/reviews/finale/1982.html

for the examples. I suspect some other people could report similar cases from other reviewers and magazines given the background knowledge needed. Occupational hazard. Be careful, its a bungle out there!

 

[Darren]

I used to buy HFN in past times, found Ken Kessler entertaining and enjoyed his enthusiasm and humour. The trouble was that his comments told you more about his tastes than the equipment. If something had a case designed by an Italian and had a valve in it, it was bound to sound great.

Though lets not forget Kessler's endless championing of British Valve brands such as Grant, Lumley, Beard and Croft. Yes he mentioned that their case work was shockingly plain but he never failed to put their sound quality first. He was pretty much much a lone voice in the early eighties with his 'Classical Glass' column way, way before HFW took up the baton.

 

[rich46]

in the 70s hifi choice used to issue reviews of hifi choice that just did reviews of say amplifiers only,which at the time it was useful so at least you could compare findings, and more test results were given tOO ...there was also a fear that manufacturers sent double checked tweeked models . Iam not sure how many are sold now,at least you can have a quick free read in WHS

 

[Del monaco]

Hi fi Mags are great for looking at what is out there.Some articles are useful.I like to read some of the HI-fi News articles and I will use their reviews for comparison when I listen to equipment.Sometimes I hear what they hear, sometimes I don’t.

 

[Lee T]

In principle I agree but in practice I wonder about this.

I observe that different forum users can produce vastly different reviews of the same equipment.

I trust someone who has used equipment for a few years over a reviewer who is paid to be expressive about a piece of equipment & has used it for a few hours, good or bad, a more balanced view can be found from user reviews, lesser of 2 evils.

 

[Marky-Mark]

Forum user reviews are better IMO, at least you have the ability to ask questions regarding their circumstances & get an idea of how something may sound in your own set up, without the person trying to sell them to you, just personal experience with a given piece of equipment.

I've done a lot of review reading. You get a feel for what's what when you put in the time. The downside of forums is echo chamber syndrome. Some users farm the keywords, factoids and conventional wisdom on gear and parrot it.
It's easy to spot because much of what's written is verbatim from a site's review you recently read. The putting in time thing. Good impartial forum reviews are out there, but the SNR is deafeningly high.

 

[uncl_nigel]

I am going to test HifiCritic...


I have just ordered a back issue with a review of stuff I have listened to and liked If they like it too they are to be trusted

 

[Tony L]

I've done a lot of review reading. You get a feel for what's what when you put in the time. The downside of forums is echo chamber syndrome. Some users farm the keywords, factoids and conventional wisdom on gear and parrot it.
It's easy to spot because much of what's written is verbatim from a site's review you recently read. The putting in time thing. Good impartial forum reviews are out there, but the SNR is deafeningly high.

To my mind the area forums and the internet community in general wins hands down is there is absolutely no pressure to sell the new. Hi-fi mags are inevitably focused on the current new market and announcements as to what is coming, the forums take a real world holistic look at everything good and bad throughout a audio history spanning back anything up to a century.

I still have a subscription to Stereophile (not convinced I’ll renew when it expires) and to be honest the areas that interest me the most are the columns as many of the writers have interesting systems that are anything but flavour of the month and include the best of all eras. As such I find myself liking the bits of the magazine that are closest to the internet mindset!

PS The thing I find somewhat odd is Stereophile seem to be killing themselves as their YouTube videos (Analog Planet etc) are so good! I tend to get far more from those than I do from the magazine, though I guess I’m in a minority of subscribers in that I’m not actually that interested in the current audio scene aside from digital technology.

 

[Joe P]

Alex,

Joe, all I know is you are awesome. Can I be banned for sycophancy?

Thanks, man. You're awesome, too — and banned forever in this universe and the parallel one where you sport a goatee!

Joe

 

[Joe P]

Tuga,

Interesting...

I don't care for reviews, I'm only interested in the measurements. I don't want to read about cables unless it's about some cable passing a signal with no measurable distortion.

I was joking, though I do like purple prose. The purplerer the better.

Joe

 

[Lee T]

I've done a lot of review reading. You get a feel for what's what when you put in the time. The downside of forums is echo chamber syndrome. Some users farm the keywords, factoids and conventional wisdom on gear and parrot it.
It's easy to spot because much of what's written is verbatim from a site's review you recently read. The putting in time thing. Good impartial forum reviews are out there, but the SNR is deafeningly high.

Depends on your relationship with the forum user, I certainly wouldn't take anyone's word on any given subject on a forum, too many Walter Mitty types out there, plenty on here, if I have a good rapport with someone, I will happily take their advice over a review, as I said before, too many variables to take into consideration with hifi equipment. Someone stating a product sounds this way, with this equipment, after this short amount of time, whilst reviewing lots of other gear at the same time, is hardly useful to anyone but the reviewer.

 

[Tel]

Forums and bake offs killed hifi reviews for me.
I learn't more from hearing kit in real world systems than I ever learnt from magazines.
When I was looking for a new pre-amp a few years ago I held a few bake offs and invited people to bring pre-amps, that gave me a chance to hear a lot if different offerings with my system in my room.

It certainly informed what was never going to go on the shortlist and potentially saved a costly mistake as some of the equipment had great reviews and sounded dreadful in my system in my room.

 

[rich46]

measurements/test are important from 100kW motor down to an amplifier, if you dont understand them that's fine. tests on speakers and the cartridge are transducers so the response info is useful in audio.todays reviews are subjective. WHS used to sell buckets of hifi mags in the 70/80s now a trickle . forums have taken over,.

 

[Brian S]

My favourite review by far was when Roy Gregory wrote that one could only truly appreciate string quartets vis speakers costing £250k. To be fair, he didn't say they were 'something of a bargain'.

Actually, I tell a lie. The speakers actually cost £500k. Here's what Roy had to say:

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/living_voice_vox_olympian_vox_elysian.htm

'Now, ask yourself this: how often do you play string quartets on your system at home? How often have you heard a system that allows you to play and enjoy string quartets? In fact, you might well ask, what’s the point of string quartets, period? Except that just about every major classical composer wrote them, and for many they are considered amongst their major works. Why? Because the instrumentation allows an incisive temporal precision to the playing that, combined with the massive dynamic contrasts available, can create exactly the drama and intensity I described above -- a level of drama and intensity that escapes virtually all audio systems. Indeed, most hi-fi renders string quartets, especially the later examples, as little more than random noise.

Contrast that with the delivery of the VO/VE, where instrumental lines are perfectly intelligible, structures explicit and contrasts dramatically effective. What the Living Voice speakers do is preserve the musical conversation that’s at the core of any string quartet. They follow the debate, trace the cut and thrust, reveal the soto voce aside or the bombastic flourish. What they do is preserve and present the sense of the piece -- and they do it effortlessly and utterly without constraint.'

Great to know the most rewarding hours of my life, at home, have been listening to random noise.

 

[Salamander]

I just don't like magazine anymore, no direct comparisons, you have to guess what the reviewer is talking about. 90% or reviews ending with "If you are in the market at this price level be sure to dem this product". As far as I can see this is just to cover their arses.