New Thread on Steve Hoffman website that says Audiogon sucks

I have two complaints about the Audiogon forums, or more accurately about the people who post here.  

First, there are too many people who post emphatic, seemingly authoritative comments who do not have actual first-hand experience to back up their opinions.  Too often comments really boil down to “I have the XYZ amp and I really like it, therefore it is the best.”  

Second, there are too many people who offer pseudo-technical explanations for what they hear when they don’t have the engineering knowledge necessary to draw those conclusions.  Some examples: all attempts to explain why cables sound different from each other; all attempts to explain why one type of mounting platform or footer sounds different from another type; and comments that attribute a component’s sound to one or more measurements which usually is just parroting the manufacturer’s claims.  

The Steve Hoffman equipment forum is hardly perfect but it has more diverse opinions and there is a higher percentage of posters with in-depth experience than at Audiogon.  For example there are some threads at SH forum on Audio Note gear that are simply the best resource I know of regarding AN equipment.

Steve Hoffman forums are excellent except for Steve Hoffman. He makes stuff up to try to impress folks. Perhaps a sales tool for him. It would be so much better if he just didn’t comment. Not a fan of his mastering work either - good but not great.

+1 Shadorne.  I haven’t liked any of SH’s reissue masterings.  I don’t know why he seems to have the reputation he does.  Plus his “reviews” of equipment on his forum seem directly related to which mfrs have given him long-term loans.

Other than Hoffman himself, the equipment forum is pretty decent in my opinion.  It’s at least worth a look every couple days.

@taters
This is important to you and needed to be posted here because...?

I mean really, who actually cares.

I’m fairly new to Audiogon. There is much to like here but I find the downsides compared to other hi-fi forums are two fold:

1. The propensity for click-bait thread titles, which would go away if people ignored them, but unfortunately the click-baiters know their game too well. Recent examples: “High end is dead?”, “Isolation stands: snakeoil?”, “What matters and what is nonsense”, “beware the audio guru”, “Integrateds:why do they all SUCK?”, “Cartridges: complete scam?”, ”ClassD=Trash?”.

Come on Audiogoners,  just ignore these click-baiters, they don’t deserve a response!

2. The other downside is the propensity of certain people to bicker and bitch to each other. Yes this happens on reddit all the time, but other hifi forums keep things civil. There is no need to insult other people, even if they ARE wrong in their belief that mains power cables don’t make a difference ;)

It’s a shame the forum does not allow photos, but other than that it is clean, intuitive, and easy to use.

And the email daily updates are great, no one else does that.