Are there bad products anymore?

default -- Sun, 04/05/2009 - 22:31

So many reviews and never a bad one - whether Stereophile, Absolute Sound, HiFi News, HiFi Plus, or What's HiFi.
In todays world either all electronics are very good or excellent or reviewers work too hard highlighting mostly the good. It requires careful reading between the lines to discover negatives and they are often subtle. Reviews, in general, like newspaper articles are too long. If a single editorial staff would take off their gloves and provide fair but tough equipment critiques, fearless of manufacturer retribution, imagine the competitors they would shut-down. A one stop shop for objective reporting would be a huge convenience to the public. The stuff dreams are made of.
The next time you read a negative review - bookmark it. They're as rare as a Hope diamond!

Steven Stone -- Mon, 04/06/2009 - 01:13

Good reviews, bad reviews...I think that whole concept is dumb.

The point of a review is to describe a product so that the reader can decide if it is right or wrong for them.

A good review is an accurate review. I think most reviews written by competent audio journalists fulfill this requirement.

Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications

Tom Martin -- Mon, 04/06/2009 - 17:22

We publish lots of reviews with negative comments. That's because essentially no product is perfect. I picked up an issue and randomly selected two reviews:

-- From the PS Audio GCPH review (an award-winner): "Are there drawbacks? Maybe. Listeners who prefer vigorously defined transients and an upfront presentation of the high frequency air between instruments might initally find the GCPH sounds softly focused or even slightly rolled off...To get higher levels of resolution you'll have to spend significantly more."

-- From the Nottingham Interspace Jr. review: "As to the "worsts", let me add them up." "This is a product that requires a fairly prodigious sense of irony". "it gets worse...". "One more thing, the worst: ...." This listing of problems takes up 75% of the review.

Now, if by "negative reviews" you mean reviews in which we completely or mostly trash a product, well some explanation is required because our reviewing system is designed to make that a rare event. We decided long ago to focus the space in our publications on the best products we can find. We spend a lot of time at shows and in our test rooms researching this, and one result is the product that we don't think is worth bothering with doesn't get reviewed. The math on this is pretty strong. At any one time there are 5000 or more audio and video products on the market and we can review perhaps 300 per year. Several thousand must be skipped and the process I've described is our approach.

This does mean that a lot of products that we review end up in the "good" "very good" and "excellent" part of the spectrum. We don't think it makes sense to call "good" product "bad" just for the sake of clarity. But, to help distinguish "good" from "excellent" we also publish quite a few lists of recommendations. We hope that those lists together with our descriptions allow you to find a short list of products worth evaluating to see how they fit with your needs.

CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC

Jim Hannon -- Thu, 04/09/2009 - 12:13

I admit that negative reviews can be entertaining, and I have purchased products that have not initially received the best reviewer accolades (e.g. The MFA Luminescence A-4 Preamp comes to mind, and it is a great one). In my earlier days, I also purchased a few that were highly praised and regretted it (there's no substitute for using your own ears, and system matching is very important).

To echo Tom's point, after reviewers and editors return from trade shows like CES, we are asked, "Which products really merit reviews?" I submit my list of 5-10 products based upon the best-sounding products I have just heard at the show, and/or those that represent significant breakthroughs. While some of the those actually do get reviewed, not all of them do. There is a pretty tough filter.