Why you should feel sorry for HiFi reviewers

[Punter]

Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives! Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.

Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!

You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.

WOW!

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!

You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?

Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives! Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.

Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!

You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.

WOW!

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!

You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?

View attachment 225321
Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.

All the guy has to do is move into a proper listening position.

 

[JSmith]

Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.

I'm trying to think who this looks like.


JSmith

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'm trying to think who this looks like.


JSmith

Tom Petty?

This guy from Pink Floyd before a haircut?

Peter Fonda without glasses or a smile?

Clint Eastwood?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Or maybe you meant the other guy. Maybe Fred Hawley who played Fred Mertz on the "I love Lucy" TV show?

 

[fpitas]

Reality: you put the Bose cubes back out, powered by your ancient Realistic receiver. Sounds good to you!!!

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives! Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.

Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!

You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.

WOW!

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!

You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?

And then you wake up.

 

[anmpr1]

Every since I became aware of 'subjective' reviewing (over fifty years ago) reviewers have been writing about how this and that component is more revealing than what came before. Each new preamp, amplifier, phono cartridge, and now DAC and interconnect represents a significant sonic improvement. With all the improvements, how horrible the old gear must have been!

With the exception of loudspeakers, which are certainly different sounding, the stuff they write is nonsense. It's all made up. A reification. All those flowery descriptions are simply psychological--i.e., emotional utterances with no solid reference, apart from how the writer 'feels' at this or that moment.

How these so-called reviewers are able to continue on, month after month, gear after gear, is a question that should be asked and answered, but is usually not. Why? The question would be considered by those in the game as indiscreet, and honest answers embarrassing.

To my (and many other's) way of thinking, the usual 'reviewing' suspects fit in to two groups: a) charlatans and b) deluded-- true believers. You cannot claim that the latter are dishonest, at least strictly speaking. So I suppose they get some kind of an ethical or moral pass in this sordid mess.

Contempt ought to be the better response, but I admit how it is possible to sometimes laugh at their shenanigans. Even so, the older I get the more difficult it is to gain any humor from their banal exploits. And I admit that when Gordon started it (followed by Harry and the others) none of us (or very few of us) had experience in a rigorous reviewing methodology. But as we grew older, we adapted our thinking to newer information, and newer ways of understanding. Conversely, others stagnated, or even regressed. Those became audio 'journalists'.

I'm sure that, likewise, they have contempt for folks like me, so I guess everyone can be happy knowing that there's an overall karmic symmetry, and psychic energy is conserved. Besides, as a 'glass half full' guy, I can point out a positive: even as the unofficial advertising arm of the 'nonsense faction' of the industry, these writers are usually squirreled away from the general populace, shilling a hobby that doesn't really affect many innocents within the overall scheme of weird hobbies. So it's not like they are doing much harm on a macro level.

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart...

Heavy heart? Not likely, because: a) there's always a chance that the vendor won't ask for it back (depending); b) the reviewer can possibly work out a 'long term' loan, promising to advertise use it in his 'reference' system, mentioning its goodness in each subsequent review; c) the reviewer can always purchase the item at a substantial discount if he can't bear to part with it (or if his neighbor needs a new piece of gear and is willing to engage in a little contract subterfuge, and his editor is kept in the dark); but more importantly, c) in tomorrow's UPS delivery there will be another set of boxes arriving, this time with even better gear, new machines from Ix, better than those from Richese. Machines which will 'blow away' what came and went before.

And so it goes. Why should any reviewer become depressed about what's leaving when he's anxiously awaiting next month's receivables? I mean, life goes on for these people.

 

[Vini darko]

Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives! Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.

Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!

You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.

WOW!

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!

You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?

View attachment 225321
Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.

This should be in "a call ofor humor thread"

 

[Timcognito]

This should be in "a call ofor humor thread"

Maybe, but none of us there would or could read something that long with our short attention spans.

 

[DanielT]

Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives! Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.

Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!

You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.

WOW!

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!

You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?

View attachment 225321
Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.

Okay you run your HiFi dream. The drug: Expensive HiFi. It gets you high and euphoric.
Of course it sounds better because it is....expensive. Of course you get high on it. It must be good.

Addition. If you don't know if the reviewer is making money from it, of course you don't know what this person really thinks. Are the ears or the wallet talking?

 

[DanielT]

... . Why should any reviewer become depressed about what's leaving when he's anxiously awaiting next month's receivables? I mean, life goes on for these people.

One might wonder that. You have a good point.

On the other hand, buy something with your own money. Human to imagining that the investment paid renderd om dividend, .. in better sound.... Even if it's just imagination.

 

[Gee2]

You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website.

I don't read high-end HiFi reviews but since a HiFi set is a chain of different components doesn't the new unveiling HiFi product say anything about the quality of the rest of the chain? As such does the high-end HiFi reviewer state the brand/model of the other components?
And assuming you are serious high-end HiFi reviewer wouldn't you strive to have the best equipment for your testing purposes and add any new improved HiFi product to your setup. If yes after 20/30 raving reviews and upgrading their system one can wonder why there is still so much veil lifting.
Maybe failed poets become high-end HiFi reviewers?

 

[mhardy6647]

Or maybe you meant the other guy. Maybe Fred Hawley who played Fred Mertz on the "I love Lucy" TV show?

William Frawley?

 

[MattHooper]

Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives! Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.

Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!

You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.

WOW!

But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!

You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?

View attachment 225321
Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.

While I don't share the across-the-board disparagement of subjective reviewing that many here hold, I've had similar feelings about the "everything requires burn in" and "everything makes a difference" beliefs.

It does seem to be to be a real bummer to think you can't just put a new piece of gear in and enjoy listening...but have to go through some long "burn in" process until it finally "sounds good." And the burn in process will usually be a matter of dispute - some audiophiles may say of your new amp "takes 100 hours to burn in" another may say "mine didn't truly settle in until after 1,000 hours."

Yeesh! Add to that the idea that "everything makes a difference" and imagine the wait that would be involved in substantially replacing your gear, like buying a new system. Wringing your hands over all the different, simultaneous "burn in" times for your new speakers, your amp, your DAC, all your different cables, your power conditioner.... It's the perfect storm for a type of neurosis.

If an audiophile or reviewer listens to a new speaker and gives some impressions off the bat "before burn-in, the speakers sounded bass light and a bit bright" I attribute that to either the difference he is hearing from the last speakers he had set up, or (if he's accurate) that he heard what they sounded like at first - e.g. bright - and then he acclimated to the sound after a while which he of course attributes to the speakers breaking in, not his brain.

 

[DanielT]

While I don't share the across-the-board disparagement of subjective reviewing that many here hold, I've had similar feelings about the "everything requires burn in" and "everything makes a difference" beliefs.

It does seem to be to be a real bummer to think you can't just put a new piece of gear in and enjoy listening...but have to go through some long "burn in" process until it finally "sounds good." And the burn in process will usually be a matter of dispute - some audiophiles may say of your new amp "takes 100 hours to burn in" another may say "mine didn't truly settle in until after 1,000 hours."

Yeesh! Add to that the idea that "everything makes a difference" and imagine the wait that would be involved in substantially replacing your gear, like buying a new system. Wringing your hands over all the different, simultaneous "burn in" times for your new speakers, your amp, your DAC, all your different cables, your power conditioner.... It's the perfect storm for a type of neurosis.

If an audiophile or reviewer listens to a new speaker and gives some impressions off the bat "before burn-in, the speakers sounded bass light and a bit bright" I attribute that to either the difference he is hearing from the last speakers he had set up, or (if he's accurate) that he heard what they sounded like at first - e.g. bright - and then he acclimated to the sound after a while which he of course attributes to the speakers breaking in, not his brain.

Maybe about Phono Cartridge " burn-in" ? I think someone who has the time and measuring equipment should try it.

 

[tiramisu]

Active crossovers have improved average-sounding speakers significantly.
Parametric EQs let us clean up a lot of design weakness
Amps and DACs are transparent.
Most recordings are crap.

Every once in a while I hear a great soundtrack that is very cool but most of the time the recording quality is the limiting factor.

Trying to write a review where the sound of one transparent amp is somehow better than another is silly.
Not applying EQ to your room or headphones and saying one speaker is better than another is also silly.

I like gear because I'm a gearhead and I like learning about sound but reviewing audio for a living seems like a pretty bleak way to make
a living.

 

[mhardy6647]

So... gee thanks... now you've got me thinking about burn in kinetics.

Does burn in look like A, kinda Gaussian (or, perhaps, Lorentzian), with a only a fleetingly brief (maybe even differential) period of optimum audiophile blissfulness? Or maybe like B, asymptotically approaching optimally OK -- but staying there (more or less). Or is it an Icarus-like climb up towards aural greatness (slow or fast, lagging or not), followed by a more or less gentle, but inevitable decay back towards Panasonic shelf stereo (panel C, curves 1 to 4) levels of audiophilicity.

I mean, this is important stuff! There are grants to be written, studies to be prosecuted, papers to be published.

 

[thewas]

Here is the most important reason why you should feel sorry about them:

Audiophoolery humour thread

Must give "silkyness" to the sound...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[anmpr1]

I thank the OP for the humor. Sometimes this hobby can be pretty humorless, if not downright depressing. Keeping it lighter is never a bad thing. Even if it is to make fun of ourselves.