I want to see bad reviews!!!

[sts9fan]

Have you ever noticed that most reviews you read online of highend audio are glowing in some aspect? I am sure that there are some products from highend manufactuerers that just don't cut the mustard so to speak. So where are the reviews of these? How can you respect a review site or reviewer if it always looks like they are a paid associate. End Rant

 

[shokhead]

Thats why the review is only a part of the hunt.

 

[20to20K]

Julian Hirsch of Stereo Review...

I once read a magazine where Julian Hirsch was being interviewed about his career with Stereo Review and the interviewer asked him that very question: "Why are most if not all equipment reviews in Audio magazines glowing? Are there only great products on the market?"

Julian eluded to the conspiracy theory that magazines are so dependent upon advertising dollars from manufacturers that the editors forbidded reviewers from saying anything negative about any company who had ads in their magazine. Julian said this was completely untrue and no such thing ever occured at Stereo Review as far as he knew (and if he didn't know about it...)

He said SR's philosophy was that the detailed equipment reviews are very time consuming, costly, and vital to their publication. They felt that taking the time to completely review substandard equipment and having that review take up valuable magazine real estate was just not logical or useful to their subscribers (that's clearly debatable). He, personally, would rather tell his readers what to consider buying and why rather than what not to buy and why. I would think that a healthy mixture of both...or at least 75 good/25 bad would be realistic.

This is one of those "glass half empty/glass half full" arguments that no
one can ever win (although many on threads like this try like heck too!)
But it appeared to be their operational philosophy.

He couldn't speak for other publications...but I've found that if you read between the lines on many of these reviews you can sometimes tell a reviewer is inferring that this product may be good...but you can get similiar performance for less money or better perfomance for the same money with another product.

I think reviews, like threads such as these, should be used as supporting data and not as a decision maker. The decision makers should be your ears, eyes, common sense and budget.

 

[Audioholics]

My advice: read between the lines.

Basically we don't typically solicit products that we think will not perform well. That should be easy to understand - who wants to play with garbage, and why deliberately set out to hurt a manufacturer?

Occasionally we are surprised however, in which case we either send gear packing before we do the full review or we expose our findings (typically most obvious in our value ratings).

We are growing by leaps and bounds this year, and if all goes "according to plan" (maniacal laugh...) it may quickly get to a point that if you don't see a company's products represented here - you may start to wonder why. At that point, read paragraph two above.

 

[Takeereasy]

Clint, I'm curious, are there any companies for which you guys have withheld a bad review? (For any reason, like fear of legal action, desire not to give a typically good company a bad rap, etc) Also was there ever a product that you guys were dying to get ahold of only to be thouroughly dissapointed? If so can you say what it was?

 

[sts9fan]

ok

"Basically we don't typically solicit products that we think will not perform well. That should be easy to understand - who wants to play with garbage, and why deliberately set out to hurt a manufacturer?

Occasionally we are surprised however, in which case we either send gear packing before we do the full review or we expose our findings (typically most obvious in our value ratings)."


How does this help us as consumers and users of you website for information?

 

[Audioholics]

We're been pretty good at picking products out so far.

And the second hasn't really happened yet. If we're dying to get ahold of something it typically measures up. Some things we've been dying to get our hands on that have panned out: Denon AVR-5805, Yamaha LPX-510, Oakley Thump... the YSP-1 was one that was actually better than we thought it would be. There's probabaly others.

We get around the problem lots of time because of how thorough we tend to be. It's hard to dance around issues if they are all covered. We're also upping the number of measurements we provide, as we constantly obtain more and better test & measurement equipment. Our amplifier measurements, for example, actually mean something - not like other ones you see that produce a pretty picture, but tell you more about the limitations of the test equipment than the amp. Having degreed engineers on staff really makes a difference. But enough of that...

 

[Audioholics]

How does this help us as consumers and users of you website for information?

Helps in two ways:

1) Keeps us able to continue to do what we do. We do not get a reputation that we will trash a component in a review "because we can". You have to understand, we're not talking about a few problems - that we will report on. We're talking about a completely ridiculous product that fails to meet minimum acceptable standards for the price (lower than a score of 3 across the board. This almost never happens.)

2) Soon, if you consistently don't see manufacturers at least partially represented here (assuming we don't blame ourselves - as it's sometimes our fault for not contacting them) you should get an idea real quick that it could be because a) either the manufacture is afraid to send it, or b) we don't want it. Many new companies are coming on board with us this year and we've hired additional reviewers. In 2006 I'd start wondering if you don't see certain products from major manufacturers known to send samples to other publications.

3) We make it our business to keep up to date on the new stuff. If we don't want it, there's likely a good reason. And we're fairly candid (to a point) in our private correspondence with readers.

4) Our reviews are thorough. Because of this you have ample room to read what we have to say about a product. There's not much room to hide. For a product to get a low score in a particular area is not uncommon and though we've been "yelled at" by manufacturers for low scores, we stand our ground.

The alternative is to charge our readers, toss off all manufacturer relations, and go buy the equipment. We have not adopted this as our business model. In fact, we feel that our relationship with manufacturers keeps us more honest and helps us to avoid making the many "ego" mistakes you see in other publications when the reviewer thinks they know more than the people who designed the product (they usually don't).

We understand there is a strong push for negative reviews. We've weighed the options and think that what we do is a fair and honest compromise. I'm being very blunt and open, but I think our readers can handle it.

 

[shokhead]

Maybe reviews of stuff going head to head would serve a better comparison then a single review? We would be able to see differences in both,good and avg.

 

[sts9fan]

I am not looking for a scorchingly horrible reviews. I am more looking for a review of a product from well known or highly reputable companies that just does not match up to their history. I know there must be products out there like this. For most people 5K is a lot to spend on an amp or what have you so many people go by brand. Just becuse brand XXX usually makes a top notch product most have come out with a product that just does not match up to their rep. This does not require a horrible review but just that it does not match up. I know people should not shop by brand but when you are new thats all you get so how an I to know that brand XXX 4K cd player is not quite as a high quality as their last model?

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

The Audio Critic has been exemplary in stating the strong and weak points of equipment under review, with little need to "read between the lines". They have done both glowing and scathing reviews, but mostly they very closely examine and report what they found, both good and otherwise. They're very techy, objective and somewhat dry -- which I like.

The trouble has been that TAC has had a very erratic publishing schedule, and except for some guest writers has been Peter Aczel's one-man-band (or crusade, if you will). Now they've forsaken print and become a paid subscription Webzine. So far they've managed to post new reviews and articles every few weeks or so. Tom Nousaine recently contributed an article. I hope some other past contributors like Don Keele and Ivan Berger will join him.

 

[20to20K]

For example...

I am not looking for a scorchingly horrible reviews. I am more looking for a review of a product from well known or highly reputable companies that just does not match up to their history. I know there must be products out there like this. For most people 5K is a lot to spend on an amp or what have you so many people go by brand. Just becuse brand XXX usually makes a top notch product most have come out with a product that just does not match up to their rep. This does not require a horrible review but just that it does not match up. I know people should not shop by brand but when you are new thats all you get so how an I to know that brand XXX 4K cd player is not quite as a high quality as their last model?

I'm as big a Denon fan as you're likely to meet. You can tell that from my
signature. But I was disappointed with some of the functionalities and ergonomics of my 2200 Universal I recently purchased. I also thought the analog reproduction of Redbook CD's was substandard. Do I hate this product? No. Would I tell people not to buy it? No. But as far as my personal preferences go I found the product to not live up to the standard I would have expected from Denon.

That doesn't mean I would never buy Denon again...that would be ridiculous!
But in my opinion this player...for $600...I found to be disappointing. I'm sure somewhere down the line a reviewer found the same to be true of a product and we as consumers would like to hear about it. We may not agree...or may think the reviewer is nitpicking (like some fellow 2200 owners may feel about me) but at least we have a heads up that at least someone of some level of expertise made mention of these issues. To me those are useful data points.
I wouldn't use that info as sole basis for making my decisions...but at least I'd know a few things to look for in the Audio Shop when I visit.

 

[Audioholics]

I know people should not shop by brand but when you are new thats all you get so how an I to know that brand XXX 4K cd player is not quite as a high quality as their last model?

That high end stuff does usually get reviewed. And we'll tear it up in certain areas if it doesn't compete. Typically, they do very well - because they know they have to.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I've gotta say the magazines not 'wasting space' on poor products is at the very least a bad decision for consumers who are hit more by advertising then decent reviews. At the worse - it's poor, and unethical journalism to withold the truth.

I would love to see some crap products reviewed that are very, VERY price concious and see how well they do.

The Onkyo S770 HTIB system for example is one of those products that looks like a great value, yet most reviews seem to be done by idiots. "Well, the speakers are big, so they get marked 20% down for that - should have used 2" cubes instead, like Bose." Arggghh!

Audiosource for example has incredibly priced in-ceiling/wall speakers. How do they sound FOR THE MONEY?

I don't know how many times I have seen products that are given a bum rap because they don't measure up to products costing thousands more, so reviewers only look at the more pricey gear. Honestly, I want to know how the S770 from Onkyo stacks up against a $2,000 setup as well as how it compares to other $500.00 HTIB packages. My belief is that it will blow them away and that people should know that other packages don't measure up. 10 average $500.00 HTIB, 1 or 2 outstanding, 1 or 2 (hundred?) sub-par packages.

When I got my $2,000 projector I took it into the high-end retail store I worked at and split the feed going to a $12,000 Runco projector. My projector had higher black levels, a little more noise, and lower resolution. From 12 feet you couldn't tell the resolution. The noise was only discernable during fast motion, and wasn't obnoxious, so the black levels were the only thing that really stood out, and it wasn't really that noticable unless you were doing an A-B test like I was. Oh - my projector was brighter as well.

The bottom line was that while my projector was not at the same level as the Runco, it was clear that the Runco was incredibly overpriced at $12,000 and that even at $5,000.00 the Runco might be overpriced compared to the $2,000.00 Panasonic which only looked a little bit worse.

I like the reviews here and other places, but could really deal with some "this product is overpriced" or "most competitors give you a lot more product for the money" reviews.

Like the Denon 5805 - It's an awesome machine, but why not 2 3805s instead? The 5805 seems to have very limited use for most people... hello! 10 amps?


Seriously, tons of people shop Best Buy - why not take 10 minutes to walk a Best Buy or Circuit City, then send out some emails to manufacturers to test the products you just saw. The Yamaha 5890 (I know it's a 1500, but this is what people SEE), the Sony $80.00 DVD player, a Samsung TV, or Mitsubishi rear screen projection CRT. There needs to be something out there so 'average joe consumer' can actually say "I know it's inexpensive, but it is all that I need right now."

Just trying some constructive criticism

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

Good discussion but the thread seemed more appropriate here. Just keeping things tidy!

 

[sjdgpt]

Regarding reviews:

I love to read about the faults of equipment. Take the Denon 3805. Clearly the remote is one of those items that people either love or hate. IMHO it is a great idea that was poorly implemented for consumers. The weakness of the remote was a factor in my purchasing decision of the 2805.



I almost bought one of those little two seat cars many years ago. A highly rated car. Car of the year and all of that. The Car & Driver reviewer made a brief mentioned how low to the ground the car was, and the slight difficulty the reviewer had getting seated in the car.

(think about it, it was even mentioned, it must have been important to somebody).

When I tried out the car, I agreed, but it was something I could live with. Then I thought of WAF, I wasn't married, but how would the date of the week like getting into the car? What about my mother?

Bought another car.

It was still a compact two door (with a dinky backseat) that was just 1 inch higher off the ground to the door sill, and seat height was about 1.5 inch higher.

Date loved it. Thought it was cute and comfortable.

Hey, sometimes WAF of GF-AF is very, VERY important.



Weakness of an equipment item can be critical to the consumer, and a through reveiw should mention the good as well as the bad.

Head to head comparisons are helpful. Especially features. With all of the "manufacturer marketing terms" that are being used, it is helpful to decipher the "manufacturer speak" into "consumer speak".

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

If you would like to write a well-written test of bad equipment, you can always post it in the "Write your own reviews" thread. Of course the world doesnt need another 'Bose is the suxxor!' rant, so try to make it sound like you're not twelve and rebelling against your mom's new boyfriend by talking smack about his stereo.

 

[Audioholics]

Of course the world doesnt need another 'Bose is the suxxor!' rant, so try to make it sound like you're not twelve and rebelling against your mom's new boyfriend by talking smack about his stereo.

ROFL

 

[HookedOnSound]

There needs to be something out there so 'average joe consumer' can actually say "I know it's inexpensive, but it is all that I need right now."

I think you're right on the money, there is alot of value at targeting that market segment. Let's face it, if you're comparing between the 'best of the best', what do you get? the Best. Not much of a risk is it?

I feel like alot of products that cost 90% more seem to only offer 10% more features. It doesn't seem fair to give them such preferential treatment. I honestly think it does very little to help drive down costs for most mere mortals living on a budget. I am not saying to justify spending as much time reviewing a $100 DVD player as opposed to a $750 unit but there should be some middle ground. There should be a list a minimal criteria that a product should/must meet within each category dependent on price range based on current/evolving technologies.

It's the synergy between available products/performance vs. price that really determines "Value".

And for ppl like me, at the end of the day that's what counts. If I want to spend $4000 on a HT speaker I would like to know I didn't get fleeced when I could have spent $4200 and get twice the performance (exagerated scenario).

Just a thought.

 

[Buckeyefan 1]

Perfect response. There is a fine line between a great deal and getting fleeced. So many guys read threads and see equipment that is heads and tails better than other stuff. In reality, there's not that much difference. If everyone were blind, I wonder how things would change in the audio world. If everyone had a PhD in EE, would people even mess with high priced audio connects? I bet Clint could put a better system together for under $1500 than any of us could for $5000 because he knows the ins and outs of audio. The problem is, most of us convince ourselves that the more we pay, the better it must be.