Perhaps I'm being naive here, but the general lack of negative reviews on loudspeakers bothers me. I get it: negative reviews means fewer speakers being shipped to the reviewer, and less advertising. Also, generally positive reviews avoid the risk of alienating certain readers. Still, aside from forum posts
it's really hard to find any actual negative opinions of speakers, which throws all professional reviews somewhat under the bus in my opinion...
particularly those that mention any compromises or flaws...since that seems to be about as bad as it gets. The range seems to be "positive with a few caveats" to "ecstatic."
You know, we've been listening to crappy speakers all our lives from those on TV's, Transistor radios, our cars, boom boxes so it's not too hard to make something better that doesn't stink so much.
The Internet has created an untold number of people who fancy themselves journalists, reviewers, social media experts, and the readers who concur because they're hungry for anything that passes as credible information. There are some reviewers who will only review products they personally choose so one might expect their reviews will tend to be positive. Even then, when they come across a product that subsequently disappoints them, one has to read their words carefully to understand what they're really saying. It's as Gene say, they don't want to alienate the manufacturers or the segment of the population that actually likes the product. Further, they don't want to alienate other manufacturers who might then be reluctant to either have their product reviewed or not advertise.
A number of years ago, I commented harshly on I believe it was the Cain & Cain Abbeys. They were single driver 'full range' speakers which I think I called turds. A well known reviewer PM'd me and said privately that he wished he could write that but the journalistic guidelines prohibited him from doing so. His personal approach was that he doesn't waste the journalistic space to ask for a review sample.
I write this because I wonder how often a reviewer actually uncovered major flaws, but must write the review in a way that chalks it up to subjective preferences, music selection, or the reviewer's own biases. In other words, a lukewarm review of a bad speaker that should have/would have been reviewed negatively if the reviewer was honest.
It's happened. Sometimes the flaws or shortcomings are disclosed, sometimes the reviewer and manufacturer manage to address these things privately and a change is made to the reviewer's sample but is not disclosed to the readers. In those cases, there's no way for (potential) owners to know if what they buy has components that are substandard because of any number of quality control issues.
Or the other option: above a certain price point there really are no "bad" speakers...it really does just amounts to different design goals and personal taste, hence the need to simply go listen.
Yup, there's a lot of speakers that meet the acceptable criteria just like there are many acceptable burgers.
Thoughts? Are there any speakers out there that are, subjective preferences aside, inexcusable? What are your thoughts on lukewarm reviews, when those seem the be as negative as they come?
Plenty. Richard Pierce, a noted speaker consultant, once said that any idiot can design a speaker and they often do.
If you go to the same reviewer for your products for awhile and check out few of his reviews you can kind of tell his "enthusasm" for the product somewhat. Even if all his conclusions for all the products he reviewed have 4 out of 5, you can almost tell right away by the words he uses and the excitement expressed from his writing. You can then kind of tell what speakers are geniunely written as a "game changer", and which are written just to write.
Women have been faking orgasms for time immemorial and men haven't picked up on it. Reviewers have deluded themselves for years thinking they know the inner workings and altruistic motivations of a company just because they're on afirst name basis and have known them for years. Enthusiasm is faked all the time and given there'senough people to rise to the reviewer's defense, critical thinking is suspended.