Honesty of the Reviewers

If I resist the temptation to generalise and/or am able to successfully combat "paranoid" tendencies, which would lead me to bedevil the entire breed, I've through (much) time and experience learnt to trust those reviewers - not in their judgements, in that they find something good or bad - but in their descriptions of how a unit may sound and perform. This always under the condition, that with quite a few gear, I've more or less heard the same as what they had described. There was a time, long ago, when TAS did not take in advertising and I often felt comfortable with what John Nork and even HP had to say. The early Threshold and the Maggie bass panels come to mind, the SP6, the Dahlquist speakers, but that was long ago. What makes me uneasy these days, is the fact, that often newly published rave reviews in the rags will be accompanied by a first time advertisement of the the same product under review. Also it seems to me, that critical reviews are getting more and more rare.( Which also has a good side, because by hatchet job reviewing, fledgling products can be driven off the market and businesses ruined, (eg Modjieskis "Beveridge"preamp, a very promising design, killed by HP in favour of the SP6) Lets face it, its business and without advertising most publications could not survive. I've learnt to mistrust final judgements like "state of the art", or "Class A products", but with reviewers, whose stile, language and musical tastes have become familiar, I find their description of how a product sounds and with what associated gear, generally very helpful.

Well Bigboy, I'm a reviewer and I know that I'm very honest when I express my views and I believe that the other reviewers who I know personally are also honest about their opinions. With commercial magazines the reality is that for the most part you are only going to see positive reviews because negative reviews scare away advertizing funds (which support the magazine). Often times, if a reviewer gets a product that he really doesn't like it ends up being returned to the manufacturer without a review. The manufacturer is informed of the product's shortcomings. This is actually the exception. Normally, products submitted for review are adroit performers. If you were a manufacturer, would you submit a product for review if you felt it was only mediocre? Believe it or not, I've seen manufacturers threaten lawsuits -- not because their product didn't get a good review, but because the review contained too many caveats for their liking. Recently, I gave a decent tube preamplifier a deservedly positive review. The company's CEO (who shall remain nameless) is no longer speaking to me because I mentioned some mild shortcomings and noted that the unit was built to a price point. Oh well! And believe me, we reviewers put a lot of time and effort into our evaluations -- and though we usually have the option to buy a review sample for around dealer cost (far from free!), reviewers are very rarely offered free gear. I've had about 40 reviews published over the last 5 years and the one time I was offered a free component was after the review was already written and published. I called the manufacturer to make arrangements for the product's return and they told me to keep it with their compliments. Also, this particular item was of foreign origin and was not expensive, which probably had some influence on their decision.

If you see an Audio Magazine where the ratio of ads to reviews is 10(ads) to 1(reviews) you have to wonder. What Hi-Fi comes to mind. They are a budget audiophile to mid-fi magazine. Whenever I look at a copy I am always amazed at how they tend to favor the budget gear over the better gear.
If memory serves they gave the Rotel RCD951 CD Player 5 "gold" stars and the RCD971 something like 3 stars. It also seems that almost no gear gets a rating less than 3 stars. They don't want to piss-off any potential advertisers. They also seem to have never reviewed an NAD or Marantz product they disliked.

There are some other threads on the subject of Reviews. I remember Stereophile came in for some bashing for "selling out" to the Ad dollar.

Plato, I find this an excellent and well considered post and have voted accordingly. I've followed the "history of reviewing in the then underground mags" practically from its beginning and hence know, how raving mad manufacturers can get, even with a midly critical review. William Zane Johnson of Audio Research for example, would not talk to HP for months on end... and that was after all those rave rewiews about Sp6 and the 110 tube amp for example. On the other hand, I also remember Michael Fremer raving about the (in)famous Tice clock, which, after getting one for myself out of sheer curiosity, proved to me, that reviewers are humans too, not neccesarily dishonest, in this case especially not, but sometimes prone to attacks of gullibility, which none of us can be sure to always be completely devoid of. That's also, why I like mags, where more than one reviewer writes about the same product.

Detlof, you raise some good points and I appreciate your response. As you noted, even the best and most respected reviewers are not immune to psychological hype and can occasionally make errors in their assessments. We are above all, human, and readers need to be aware of that aspect -- especially condidering how subjective most reviews are. Indeed, at times it's more akin to judging a poetry contest than related to science. That said, I've read many reviews that in my view accurately captured the review item's intrinsic character. :)