What would make HiFi Reviews (more) useful?

[Ajani]

A recent discussion with RGA in a Speaker thread reminded me, that I had planned to start this thread almost 2 weeks ago... However, a case of severe laziness has prevented me from doing so until now... So here goes:

What would make HiFi reviews (more) useful to you?


Objective versus Subjective?

Some of us younger audiophiles/enthusiasts weren't aware that before J. Gordon Holt launched Stereophile all HiFi was purely about objective measurements... No one felt the need to actually listen to equipment... You just ran test measurements and recommended whatever measured best...

Reviews based solely on Listening to the equipment are open to sighted bias. But reviews based solely on measurements assume that what we hear is solely determined by the items we know how to measure. (Scientists were convinced the world was flat until someone proved it was round - so just because we don't know how (or what) to measure yet, doesn't mean we won't find it out one day...

Advertising or Subscription only?

For major HiFi mags like Stereophile (US) and What HiFi? (UK), the editorial staff is seperate from the advertising team... So John Atkinson of Stereophile doesn't get to see ads that appear in the mag before you and I do, and he has no input in the advertising process...

However, the prevailing school of thought seems to be that HiFi mags are slaves to their advertisers and that negative reviews are never published (which is patently false and easily disproved by anyone with a desire to do so)... So would having all mags turn to subscription only and drop all advertising be the answer?

Also, would you be willing to pay 5-10x the current price of the HiFi mags for an advertising free version?

Lots of Negative Reviews or Mostly Positive Ones?

Here in the western world, we see far more positive reviews of products, than in the UK (where nasty reviews occur frequently)... The reason for so many raves here is because reviews mostly select products they are interested in to review, so odds are that they will like most of what they review. In the UK, reviewers/review teams pretty much review anything they can get their hands on. Also the UK tends to give ratings 1 - 5 stars or globes, while the US usually just writes a long article. So which one is better?

In the US, you see far less really nasty reviews, but in the UK, those nasty reviews are very often contradicted by other mags... So one mag well rate a product with 5 out of 5 stars and name it product of the year, while another will give it 3 stars and say they can't even recommend it...

To Shootout or not to Shootout?

UK Mags tend to do regular shootouts of products in the same price range, while US Mags generally don't. Is a shootout more or less useful than a solitary review?

Much like with negative reviews, shootouts in the UK usually contradict each other...

I'll add other areas for discussion later (assuming anyone is interested in this topic)... But feel free to share your own views...