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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: A Question For Audio Reviewers posted by thetubeguy1954 on January 27, 2006 at 06:05:49:
I like to listen to something for a minimum of 90 days to get a feel for what it can do. That allows for most things to break in adequately, and it gives me a chance to try things with various equipment and in different rooms to get a feel how flexible it is. That also gives me enough time to see how first impressions stack up against longer term perceptions.Usually 90 days is enough to get a feel for reliability, as it seems that if there are problems with gear it will become evident in that time frame.
90 days or so also gives me a chance to arrange for some nice group listening sessions to hear various people's perceptions, and how their perceptions might change over time with repeated listening, as well as to arrange for listening sessions in other peoples systems. It's surprising how useful this is: For example, a pair of speakers that sounds like crap in one persons system can be brilliant in another persons room & system, and that is very useful information on understanding the big picture of product performance. It seems most experienced listeners hear the same sorts of things during listening sessions, but how they value what they hear can be dramatically different based on their personal preferences, so I like to get that sort of feedback too.
A group listening environment also helps keep one's findings in perspective and introduces a 'peer review' element that helps keep perceptions grounded in reality and introduces the element of accountability: A reviewer is not too likely to slam something if the listening panel loves it, or vice versa. It also tells me something about what people think of the value of a product in the price to performance realm.
Almost of of my reviews include 'blind sessions' that evaluate performance irrespective of cost or appearance - that contributed by my blind friend Bill the piano tuner who needless to say has hearing & musical perceptions beyond the norm of most of us.
I also like to include musicians in listening sessions to get their feedback. It's interesting how many insights musicians have that regular audio hobbyists don't when it comes to how convincing equipment is in sounding like real music.
If I could do any one thing to improve my reviewing it would be this: I'd like to have test equipment to see if I could correlate perceptions to measurements. I've always appreciated the way John Atkinson incorporates measurements into reviews, and I wish I could do more of that.
Kind regards,
Jeff
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Follow Ups
- Re: A Question For Audio Reviewers - Jeff Day 01/27/0609:28:41 01/27/06 (1)
- Re: A Question For Audio Reviewers - Ping 20:48:46 01/30/06 (0)
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