Reviews and reviewers - are they necessarily bad?

[jandl100]

Danger for me? Nah - I've too much common sense and the honest belief that people's taste in music and audio can be very, very different.

I don't care what other folk think of my system - it's me that listens to it!

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

So if a manufacturer visited you and then said your system sounds crap would you take it out on him the next time he sent you gear. Probably not in your case, but the manufacturer (or more to the point his PR dept) wouldn't take the chance, they would crawl up your arse, which is what happened and probably still happens. Or they would so dominate the reviewer as in Linn and Naims case that the reviewers only desire was to crawl up their arse.

[Daniel Quinn]

As a teenager, Jimmy Hughes wasted so much of my time. Now I can't blame him it was my fault for being an impressionable bloody idiot, but I can't forgive him.

Peter Belt, anyone !!!!

[jandl100]

Now lets transpose this to the present and forum Golden Ears, look at the comments on Marco's system, never a bad word (almost). Well I have spoken to three people who have heard it and none of them thought it was that good but wouldn't say so publicly as he has acquired the power of a reviewer and is not exactly emotionally stable.

Well, not me, guv.

Marco has known my views on Tannoy DCs for a long time (I find the upper mids grainy and unlistenable in the longer term) but he was convinced that HIS were different. I heard them at Scalford - nope, still the same old Tannoy grain - quite noticeable on his actually.
And I told him so.

His reaction was a) genuine bafflement, he really doesn't hear it the same as I do and b) curiosity. He really didn't seem to mind at all -- and we have had much good-natured AOS forum banter on the subject. I think he does share my own sentiments on there being a wide diversity of audio opinion.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

But you are not one of his "in crowd" on the forum as you disagreed with him, and haven't crawled up his arse.

[jandl100]

So if a manufacturer visited you and then said your system sounds crap would you take it out on him the next time he sent you gear.

No, of course not.

Probably not in your case,...

Thank you!

[jandl100]

But you are not one of his "in crowd" on the forum as you disagreed with him, and haven't crawled up his arse.

Ah well -- I don't think I'm part of anyone's "in crowd" -- just ask James on the Wigwam.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

You are part of our in-crowd Jerry, whether you want it or not because you are cantankerous enough

[jandl100]

Yeah - I do get a bit feisty on occasion!

[Daniel Quinn]

The mechanics of influence and bias are far more subtle and NONE OF US , are above it . Individuals are not free atoms colliding in brownian motion ,we are social beings .

For instance in my job I make a deliberate rule not to be friendly with any defendant solicitors , because it tempers your approach . Its hard to call someone's argument idiotic if your know them as a person and like them . I am not even friendly to them on the phone. I dont want to know if there nice , funny or if female attractive , I just want to know why they are talking shit to me . :D