Japanese vs American
Greetings AVPhille,
We are sorry you feel that we only favor Japanese products. But I don't think we have any special favoritism to Japanese designed and/or made products. In fact, we did an in depth article on the Parasound Halo C 1 and C 2 and the review was very positive. We encourge you and others to read this review and see that we did our best to find ways to work around some of the missing elements on these aging products because we felt they were worthwhile products to consider in a vast, rapidly changing, highly competitive marketplace.
Parasound Halo C 1 and C 2 Review
If memory serves, the only non-Japanese Processor we hit pretty hard was the Sunfire Theater Grand III. Our review of that product was indeed critical, but given it's pricetag, we simply felt it had too many shortcomings to be competitive. You're welcomed to read that review as well.
Sunfire Theater Grand III
One thing you may want to consider is that we do try to be objective when possible while also supporting our subjective comments with facts and/or experience. This is the very reason why we provide measurements when possible and why we created an AV Processor/Receiver Checklist.
AV Processor/Receiver Checklist
This list was completed after careful consideration and thought combined with input from many people in the field from companies in America, Sweeden, Japan and other places. We tried to compile this list by listing product offerings and assigning them a logical score based on what we felt was critical, important, or bonus features. We then use this table to score the products under review. I'm not sure how much more objective we can be beyond this as all Processor or Receivers are placed under the same scoring process. In fact, this is an adaptive score card as each year there new offerings that are added to the list.
As for our measurements, we have a growing list of test equipment that we use in speaker analysis, cable analysis, video analysis, amplifier analysis and other analysis of many products. This growing list of equipment can be viewed in our evolving table.
Audioholics Test Equipment
We even completed several training classes including ISF, HAA, RF, and several others, all in an effort to gain more knowledge to provide better and more complete reviews.
Now grant it reviews can be subjective too, including ours. That's just the nature of a review and why we are not just a test lab. We do our best to support our subjective writings with objective facts as often as possible and as best we can. But even magazine publishers author articles that are subjective and may be considered biased by some. I don't think there's a steadfast solution to this misconception, but we're willing to listen. Much of our subjective views are based on our experience with tons of products, and typically not from the seat of our pants.
Thanks for continuing to visit Audioholics and discussing in our forums. We do hope you continue to provide valuable input and comments. But we ask that you consider not being as abrasive to us when you disagree as we find that it's counter productive. We always value and welcome constructive criticism as it helps us improve our site and services. There are time however, that we get a bit taken back by argumentive comments in place of critical evaluations. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we are all Engineers and not Philosophers.
We do wish for you to continue to provide valuable feedback and comments, but please be a bit more tactful in your approach as it will go a long way with us.