As home entertainment
equipment becomes increasingly more complex, with
new products and new technologies appearing almost
daily, potential buyers are frequently a little
confused, or completely overwhelmed. Many turn to
product reviews in various publications, and on the
Internet, for guidance. The advice they get may not
be exactly what they had hoped for. While finding a
true consumer advocate (besides me) among
todays equipment reviewers will be difficult,
you may still benefit from these product reviews if
you maintain a certain level of skepticism. You
must always remember the real business of the
source of information that you use. Here is my
advice in that regard.
The Internet
Internet publications and newsgroups tend to be
very amateurish and the advice you get there
usually ranges from mildly inaccurate to completely
false. Anybody, no matter how misinformed, can
express an opinion on the Internet, and they do.
Newsgroups are the worst. Im sure that some
of these people are actually trying to help others
with misguided advice, but some mean-spirited
individuals appear to be consciously attempting to
make humor at the expense of others. Internet
Webzines are selling advertising just
like their print media counterparts, but their
writers are paid little, if anything, and most are
sadly lacking in experience.
Always remember that old adage: free advice is
usually worth just about what you pay for it. Or
this one: if you measure a room with a rubber
ruler, you still dont how big it is. False
information can actually be worse than no
information, because now you think that you
know.
People who are genuinely interested in the
performance quality of their home entertainment
systems, and those individuals with a solid
background in technology, are unlikely to be
computer geeks who spend hours online answering
questions in some newsgroup posting.
The Internet is, however, an excellent source for
product details and specifications. Go directly to
the manufacturers Website or to a trusted
source like WidescreenReview.com that offers links
to manufacturers sites. You can usually get
pictures on these Websites too, and some indication
of the companys market position. This can
give you an idea about whether you are the intended
customer, or if they are aiming their products at
those with bigger or smaller budgets than
yours.
Mainstream Magazines
The mainstream press will usually augment product
reviews with lots of pictures and several
meaningless graphs with little or no interpretation
of what these graphs are supposed to demonstrate.
They may be clever enough to measure components but
not clever enough to describe the sonic
consequences of the results. You might have noticed
that higher-priced products, or products from
companies with bigger advertising budgets, always
perform best-and nothing ever performs poorly. The
product from this months biggest advertiser
is better than the product from last months biggest
advertiser-if it costs more. Otherwise it is just
recommended that you consider it as a good value
for the money.
Mainstream publications seldom mention how a
component actually sounds, with more than a
fleeting statement. You get the products
specifications, a statement that it meets these
specs, and the selling price. This information
could be retrieved with greater accuracy from the
manufacturers Website on the Internet.
You may get some advice of value from the
picture-book magazines, but always remember that
their primary business is selling advertising, not
helping you. Promoting their advertisers
products is called partnering with the
advertiser in the publishing business. Be
wary.
High-End Publications
High-end magazines seem to consider technical
knowledge to be an impediment to an unbiased
subjective review. They often review products using
obscure associated equipment with obscenely high
price tags, that you are unlikely to ever have the
opportunity to hear for yourself, let along buy.
And because they eschew technical questions as
irrelevant, they can be easily fooled by products
made with questionable design competence. Let me
give you an example: in a recent amplifier review
published in a subjective high-end
magazine, the author started his review with the
statement that he was a listener, not an engineer.
He then described what he heard when he listened to
the amplifier under review and compared the sound
to that offered by competing products. He used
loudspeakers that I have never heard of and I write
the new products section of Widescreen Review
magazine and go to all the trade shows. These
speakers cost twice as much as my luxury sport
utility vehicle. Now this is what a subjective
reviewer should do,- simply describe how the
product under review sounds-but he didnt stop
there.
In the course of the review, it was mentioned that
the manufacturer warned in the instruction manual,
that the review amplifier could blow up if it was
not used exclusively with a certain brand of
speaker cable that includes a low-pass filter as
part of the cable design. The amplifiers
specifications were listed in the article, and it
failed to double in power output when the load
impedance was halved. In fact it barely doubled
when impedance was quartered. Then the review
stated that the amplifier had a 90-amp current
capability. Lets take a look at a couple of the
questions that these statements raise in my
mind.
Why design an amplifier with such extreme bandwidth
(-3dB at 1.8mHz) that it tends to oscillate unless
its low-pass filtered by the speaker cable?
Why not put the filter inside the amplifier to make
it stable under all conditions? There may be an
explanation for this choice and I would have asked
the designer to elaborate.
There are only two reasons that I know of that
would prevent power from doubling when the load
impedance is halved: either the power supply is
inadequate and sags under heavy load, or the
current capability of the output stage is
insufficient necessitating current limiting.
Neither of these possibilities seems probable in an
amplifier design that costs $15,000 for a stereo
pair. Obviously, if the amplifier really could
deliver 90 amperes of current, it would produce a
lot more power into lower impedances than it did.
This requires an explanation and there indeed may
be a good one, but this reviewer didnt know
enough to ask.
My intention here is not to malign the product
which I have not heard, nor the reviewer who is
well respected for his keen ears. Im just
pointing out that I would not purchase an expensive
amplifier after reading this review, without
further investigation. You shouldnt
either.
Balance
Once a design is completed and an audio product is
offered for sale, all that is really important to a
prospective buyer is how that product performs, and
a review that doesnt tell you much about
sound quality doesnt tell you very much. A
review that only offers measurements, tells you
nothing that you cant get from the
manufacturers literature. On the other hand,
a review can also be misleading when serious
questions are raised about a manufacturers
performance claims or design goals, and they go
unanswered because the reviewer lacks sufficient
knowledge about how the product works to ask for
explanations.
What Im striving for in my audio product reviews for Widescreen Review, is a balance. I want to present enough technical information so that you can judge the validity of advertising claims and enough subjective information about what I heard when I listened to the product so that you get an idea of what I thought of the products performance potential. I also try to describe how the product looks and mention the apparent construction quality, because pride of ownership is important to many of us. I would appreciate your feedback on how Im doing.
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