Head-Fi deserved to be mocked, but I will no longer contribute to the spread of idiocy from that forum. No point.
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Most idiotic subjective review comments
- Thread starter CapMan
- Start date
Aren't ALL subjective reviews idiotic? Whether HiFi, cars or wine or restaurant or theatre or book, any review that's just one person's opinion is idiotic. The ONLY reviews of any value are those where the reviewer limit themselves to factual, verifiable, numbers, with perhaps a comment on how the venue/device/item worked for them. As to the modern mania for reviewing every purchase, however trivial, that really gets me going.
Just the facts, ma'am.
S
Just the facts, ma'am.
S
How many women do you think are on this site?
DonR
Major Contributor
I can tolerate quite a bit of subjective blather from a speaker or headphone review (although half of that probably applies to the room or the reviewer's head shape) but to get such twaddle from an item so benign as a fuse or a power bar, that really grinds my gears.
It gets especially idiotic in audiophile reviews because sound is so much more ephemeral than our other senses and that widens the gulf between perception and reality.
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Saponetto
Active Member
Always loved her.
Modulin
Member
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Why so many fall for those cable scams. The recalibration should be a clue that it's a scam.
No. And there's a lot of things which can't be just reduced to numbers. And of course sometimes that's all that is needed, but it depends on the situation.
A digital audio upscaler: "The system uses an FPGA (740 cores) based on Xilinx XC7A200T with [redacted] reaching a record length of 1,015,808 weighting factors (taps). This means that at the output you get not “steps” that can annoy the ears with their discreteness, but a smoothed and smooth characteristic, most of all reminiscent of a pure analog sound."
I hate when my ears get annoyed with discreteness.
I hate when my ears get annoyed with discreteness.
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Very much less so when subjectively describing differences that actually exist (Flavour/texture/quality of food and wine, or performance of cars, or performance of actors, quality of writers and direction)
Digital steps, the bogeyman of every analogue-lover
Modulin
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Unproven science especially of a person with a science degree in audio. Can get a title, call from the wild, dogmatic of arrogance. It smells, and there is smoke, don't buy into what there trying to sell.No.
But then, some of us aren't dogmatic on the issue.
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I wouldn't push it too far. There are definitely limits. And judgement is called for. I mean, if Walter Rohrl or Lars Kern offers an opinion about which car 'feels' more 'solid' at the Nürburgring, or that the Bergwerk is scarier than the Mutkurve at speed (all subjective descriptions), I'm going to consider those opinions highly.
On the other hand, if Herb R. tells me that the latest Sharknado cable, featuring platinum plated locking Jaws plugs, gives improved front to back depth, I'm putting that opinion in the idiotic category.
Paucity of Rigour And TrustworthinessLooking forward to prat reviewers with their pace, rhythm and timing
It's odd that Bose got so worked up. I was under the impression those were design features, not flaws. In any event the users love it.Reading this reminded me of the time when Bose sued over a Consumer Reports review of their 901 speaker system haha!
Bose won initially, the judgment was reversed on appeal, and the case made it's way to the Supreme Court, which finally ruled 6-3 in favor of Consumers Union.
It would have been amusing if the courts had actually demoed the speakers so they could experience the effects themselves. They did find that the bit about "wandering" instruments was a disparaging* statement. Apparently these audiophile judges only approve of stable imaging—where's the fun in that?
(*The comment about standard speaker systems allowing pinpoint imaging better than the Bose was noted as a criticism of the 901, and since the 'wandering' portion was preceded with the word 'worse,' it was clearly meant to be another, stronger criticism. The judge believed that it was a false statement to say that the sound could 'wander,' thus he held that it was a false and disparaging statement. Apparently, there had been some testimony about stereo playback commonly having perceptual shifts in location, so the judge either ignored that or thought that the wandering described in Consumer Reports went way beyond the norm, and had to be false. The appeals court found that Bose offered no proof of actual malice, so they reversed the judgment. The Supreme Court affirmed the finding of the Court of Appeals.)
More details here:
BOSE CORPORATION, Petitioner v. CONSUMERS UNION OF UNITED STATES, INC.
www.law.cornell.edu
Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc. - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
