Most nauseating equipment review I've ever read!

[kaiser_soze]

I was browsing around for some objective tests of the Revel F12. One of the reviews that I found was in avguide.com, written by someone named “Arnie Williams”. This article was so full of nonsensical blather that I was thoroughly repulsed well before I got to the part that blew me away:

“The Concertas captured the tight focus of the guitar’s ringing overtones propelled by the specially designed sound box that overcomes the guitar string’s natural tendency for sonic decay with a resulting cathedral-like resonance.”

WTF? This makes me want to puke. He is saying that the transducer resonates, and that this is good because it overcomes the natural tendency for a guitar string’s vibrations to decay over time. If you aren’t laughing, you should be. I wouldn’t trust a single thing that he says about this speaker or anything else, but of course I am laughing at the suggestion that it is desirable under any circumstances for a loudspeaker to resonate. In the case of a loudspeaker that is dedicated to an electric guitar, the loudspeaker in that case is an integral part of the musical instrument. But in the case of a loudspeaker intended to faithfully reproduce an acoustic waveform that has been electronically recorded, this is preposterous. What I don’t get, is how someone that is this woefully uneducated and ignorant of technical matters comes to a position where they write reviews for others to read, and moreover, how someone like this can be this literate? Perhaps the side of the brain that is responsible for artistic expression is getting all the blood supply, and the side that is responsible for logical thinking has died off.

 

[Sheep]

Your first post, is a great post!

That is repulsive. Thanks for the heads up!

SheepStar

 

[Resident Loser]

It's called factoids...

I was browsing around for some objective tests of the Revel F12. One of the reviews that I found was in avguide.com, written by someone named “Arnie Williams”. This article was so full of nonsensical blather that I was thoroughly repulsed well before I got to the part that blew me away:

“The Concertas captured the tight focus of the guitar’s ringing overtones propelled by the specially designed sound box that overcomes the guitar string’s natural tendency for sonic decay with a resulting cathedral-like resonance.”

WTF? This makes me want to puke. He is saying that the transducer resonates, and that this is good because it overcomes the natural tendency for a guitar string’s vibrations to decay over time. If you aren’t laughing, you should be. I wouldn’t trust a single thing that he says about this speaker or anything else, but of course I am laughing at the suggestion that it is desirable under any circumstances for a loudspeaker to resonate. In the case of a loudspeaker that is dedicated to an electric guitar, the loudspeaker in that case is an integral part of the musical instrument. But in the case of a loudspeaker intended to faithfully reproduce an acoustic waveform that has been electronically recorded, this is preposterous. What I don’t get, is how someone that is this woefully uneducated and ignorant of technical matters comes to a position where they write reviews for others to read, and moreover, how someone like this can be this literate? Perhaps the side of the brain that is responsible for artistic expression is getting all the blood supply, and the side that is responsible for logical thinking has died off.

...and in case you hadn't noticed, this hobby, more specifically certain segments of it, couldn't exist without them...Some folks think that by including psuedo-techie words and other vague allusions, re: overtones, resonances, etc. somehow reinforces the claptrap they spew forth. Unfortunately, many others buy into it.

In your example, anyone even remotely familiar with high school physics will realize that the instrument itself and playing technique accounts for the attack and decay...this is well out of any transducers' domain.

Someone claiming that a loudspeaker (at least one for playback) could extend and/or expand on that relationship, doesn't have a clue.

Question really is, was the review done by a legit "reviewer" or simply by a consumer/end user? The former should know better, the latter would probably be some sort of self-proclaimed audio-pile, who by virtue of large cash expenditures (particularly on after-market wiring, etc.), thinks he's got it all figured out and wants to wow folks with his expertise. Of course, it could be a combination of both.

jimHJJ(...many are simply ignorant of reality...)

 

[Geno]

If you like that review, go to Stereophile and sample some of the high-end interconnect & speaker cable bloviating, especially about the "break-in" periods. Makes me wanna puke.

Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong...

 

[jeffsg4mac]

If you like that review, go to Stereophile and sample some of the high-end interconnect & speaker cable bloviating, especially about the "break-in" periods. Makes me wanna puke.

Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong...

Your not wrong and it's not just your opinion

 

[miklorsmith]

I have noticed break-in as a significant factor, certainly with high-efficiency drivers. Many think capacitors and other electronics display this phenomenon, though I haven't noticed that reliably. Wires . . . ?

 

[MAX661]

Pretty much all reviews in mags are like this to some extent. My favorite line in almost every speaker review I read is:

"They are a great value and perform as well or better than speakers costing 3 times there price"

you have no clue how many times I have read this, If this were true then why have any speakers 3 times there price. And why when I read an article that is about a speaker that is 3 times the price of the speakers in the first article I read still a great value "and better or as good as speakers that are 3 times their price?"

It's a funny hobby we are into...

 

[highfihoney]

most reviews are worthless especially in stereophile,where else can you read about how a power cord has a great bass attack.

 

[Buckeyefan 1]

The best reviews are those that over-emphasize the build quality of the speaker. It's a nice way of saying they sound like $hit.

 

[rollinrocker]

I'm not defending or bashing anyone and at the risk of hijacking kaiser's thread, i'd like to ask everyone, what do YOU look for in a review. Where do YOU put the most importance when using a review to help make a buying decision?

 

[hifiman]

If you want a good laugh go over to hometheaterhifi.com and look at any review done by Jason V. Serinus.

 

[furrycute]

With regard to speaker reviews, I usually skip straight to the comparisons page, where the reviewer compares this particular speaker with one I am familiar with.

With really convoluted reviews, you usually have to read for the underlying tone of the author. You can't believe the words you read on the surface. Usually you can get a feel of what the author really thinks of the speaker by counting how many times the author defends some of the deficiencies of the speaker. I've noticed that's a common tactic, where the reviewer acknowledges some weakness of the speaker, but then glosses over them by pointing out other good attributes that make up for those deficiencies. To me, if they are deficiencies, they are deficiencies, no matter what pretty language the reviewer uses to cover it up.



I was reading an amature review of a Lavry DAC, in comparison to a Benchmark DAC1. In the review, the reviewer admitted to the below par workmanship of the Lavry DAC, but tried to gloss over this deficiency by pointing out that the Lavry DAC is more curved, therefore "sexier" looking than the square edged Benchmark DAC1. Give me a break.

The same reviewer also admitted that although the Lavry DAC does not resolve the details as well as the Benchmark DAC1, nevertheless he points out that the sound from the Lavry DAC has a silky smooth quality. Hello, that's just saying that the Lavry DAC has a lower resolution than the Benchmark DAC1, and it is inferior in sound reproduction. Forget the crap about the "silky smooth" sound part.


I never believed another word that reviewer have said since that I read that review.

 

[mtrycrafts]

bloviating, ...

Are you a O'Riley fan or something???

 

[mtrycrafts]

I was browsing around for some objective tests of the Revel F12. One of the reviews that I found was in avguide.com, written by someone named “Arnie Williams”. This article was so full of nonsensical blather that I was thoroughly repulsed well before I got to the part that blew me away:

“The Concertas captured the tight focus of the guitar’s ringing overtones propelled by the specially designed sound box that overcomes the guitar string’s natural tendency for sonic decay with a resulting cathedral-like resonance.”

WTF? This makes me want to puke. He is saying that the transducer resonates, and that this is good because it overcomes the natural tendency for a guitar string’s vibrations to decay over time. If you aren’t laughing, you should be. I wouldn’t trust a single thing that he says about this speaker or anything else, but of course I am laughing at the suggestion that it is desirable under any circumstances for a loudspeaker to resonate. In the case of a loudspeaker that is dedicated to an electric guitar, the loudspeaker in that case is an integral part of the musical instrument. But in the case of a loudspeaker intended to faithfully reproduce an acoustic waveform that has been electronically recorded, this is preposterous. What I don’t get, is how someone that is this woefully uneducated and ignorant of technical matters comes to a position where they write reviews for others to read, and moreover, how someone like this can be this literate? Perhaps the side of the brain that is responsible for artistic expression is getting all the blood supply, and the side that is responsible for logical thinking has died off.

I think you will fit in here very well. Welcome

Oh, I bet that reviewer was hired because he is a good writer, not because there is a technical requirement at that rag. That is not unique either.

 

[sjdgpt]

I'm not defending or bashing anyone and at the risk of hijacking kaiser's thread, i'd like to ask everyone, what do YOU look for in a review. Where do YOU put the most importance when using a review to help make a buying decision?

Tell me the bad stuff. Yes maybe it is a deficiency, maybe a weakness, maybe it is something that I can live with, or would actually like.

Take a car review ....

"only gets 31 mpg on the highway while the competition gets 35 mpg"

Is it weakness, can I live with 31?

If the only thing the reviewer could find wrong was the gas mileage was poorer than the competition, I may still buy the car.

On the other hand "brakes felt spongy and the stopping distance from 60 was 912 feet so we asked for a second sample car and that one faired even worse" is going to cause me to buy a different car every time.

For audio, the original remote to the Denon AVR 3805 was ripped a new hole in nearly every review, but the reset of the review was generally very flattering.


So basically I like bad reviews, or better yet, reviewers that can be honest and declare one product bad and the next product good.

 

[mtrycrafts]

most reviews are worthless especially in stereophile,where else can you read about how a power cord has a great bass attack.

At the cable makers website? LOL TAS?
Not in T$$, or S&V

 

[kaiser_soze]

Thanks for all the comments. Today I was at a newsstand and picked up a copy of "The Absolute Sound" to browse through. They had some sort of summary of recommended stuff, and it included the F12 speakers, with a reference to the review by Arnie Williams three issures prior. I seriously intend to audition the F12 speakers, but I'll never again pick up a copy of "The Absolute Sound". What a piece of crap. Whatever happened to all the good audio magazines? I remember that there were still a couple of good ones just a few years ago. Perhaps the good ones had to convert to A/V in order to attract enough subscribers to remain in business. I think one of the tell-tale signs of a crappy magazine is that half of every page is devoted to ads for equipment that sells for $10,000 and up.

I wonder what people think of "Sound & Vision"?

 

[hifiman]

It's very hard to find a decent review of products. Some reviews don't go into nearly enough detail, while others get bogged down in numbers and graphs. I don't think consistenly good reviews have existed since the days of Julian Hirsch (yes I'm old).

years ago I purchased a Philips DVD player that had been well-reviewed at the time. I got it home, tried it out and was pleased with it at the time. A bit later I put in a concert DVD that had multiple angles. As it played I noticed an icon on the upper left corner of the screen that was about 2" squared (not a big tv at the time so it was very obtrusive). It turns out that this icon appears whenever a DVD with multiple angles was playing to let you know it had angles you could switch through. Very helpful, but you could not turn the icon off. What the hell? Philips really screwed up with that one, but more importantly the reviewers dropped the ball because they didn't thoroughly check out all the functions. Had they done so, I doubt anyone would have unconditionally recommended it.

Time passed and I got so worked up over the Denon 2900 DVD player. Reviewers loved it so I decided this was the one for me to replace my trusty DVD-A player. I wanted a "universal" solution that would not only give me a nice picture, but also give me high-res music with bass managment, good functionality, and the ability to view photos from a disc. Well now I already fessed up to being old and I have to admit my memory fades, but I recall having an issue with the bass management for DVD-A. I believe the trouble was that I couldn't get the volume I needed from the subwoofer through the setup screen. My sub's connected throught the LFE bypass connection,
which also bypasses the level control. So it wasn't really gonna do it for me.

The other issue was with the photo playback. It was absolutely horrible. It would load a photo excrutiatingly slow. Any rotation or zooming would bog it down even more. I had a cheap throwaway Magnavox DVD player in a smaller system that would load the same photos in the blink of an eye and allow them to be manipulated far more. So do people buy a $1000 DVD player just for its photo viewing? Of course not, but its a function built into the unit that shouldn't be ignored in a comprehensive review. So back it went for a refund. Some time later one review mentioned the same sound level issue I had and described a work-around for it. It would have been nice if other reviewers had caught on to that issue as well.

The other end of the spectrum are those reviews that are bloated with graphs and numbers. I'm sure we've all read the numerous articles cautioning consumers about getting too caught up in the numbers game because ultimately they really don't tell you how a product will perform. Those same publications (often in the same issue) run review after review with lengthy number and graph explanations. Ultimately what good does that do me? All I really need to know is if the product performs as expected without bugs and hiccups. I need a reviewer to evaluate every function and I need it described in a language free from a reviewer's inflated sense of self importance.

 

[Hi Ho]

HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! I never thought to look at the Stereophile website.

I love their reviews of component stands/racks.

Most reviews are not worth much of anything. I pick up Sound & Vision at the library once in a while but I take their reviews with a grain of salt, a very small grain.

Audioholics certainly has some of the best product reviews I have seen and they are the ones I read first.

 

[Homer J]

I'm new to this site and came upon this post because I am looking at the Revel F12s as a possible upgrade. Although I agree with the tone of this thread that reviews must be taken with a huge grain of salt, I think the original poster misinterpreted what the TAS reviewer was saying: the resonating "box" to which he refers is some kind of "sound box" used by the performer, not the speaker. Here is the comment in context:

When you first see Paul Galbraith walk onto stage with his 8-string guitar with cello endpin and combination stool/chair/sound box, you know
you're in for a treat. Galbraith holds his guitar in the cello position and the combination end pin/sound box gives the guitar an almost eerie organ-like reverb. The Concertas showed impressive transparency on Galbraith's rendition of the D Minor last m o v e m e n t "Ciccona" to "Partita No. 2," originally composed for unaccompanied violin and transposed to E minor for the guitar. The Concertas captured the tight focus of the guitar's ringing overtones propelled by the specially designed sound box that overcomes the guitar string's natural tendency for quick sonic decay with a resulting cathedrallike resonance.

By the way, I heard these speakers and they sound excellent, but they're quite large so the wife needs some convincing ("honey, they sound as good as speakers that cost 3 times the price!" ) I'll follow up if I end up purchasing.