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In Reply to: RE: The Reality of Reviewers posted by John Atkinson on April 13, 2014 at 15:53:06
that he singles out sex with your spouse. Is it different when you have sex with someone who's not your spouse?
More seriously, I guess I'm not totally on board with this. I agree with the basic premise, but I'm not comfortable taking "truth" totally out of the reviewing equation, as this seems to be doing. It's well-known in wine reviewing--I read a book on it once--that while personal preferences in wine are entirely personal, there's an objective element to assessing the quality of a wine. It may be, in a quasi-objective sense, well-made, whether or not you like to drink it. And then there's the question of measurements and basic engineering.
Jim
Follow Ups:
Hi Jim:
"there's an objective element to assessing the quality of a wine"
I'd be curious to learn what objective reference the author has in mind. Consider a wine's balance: A wine is said to have good balance when the concentration of sweetness/dryness, fruit, level of tannin and acidity are in harmony.
But there is no universal agreement for the constitution of a balanced wine: not among wine lovers, not among experts, not among wine consumers, and certainly the divide between experts and consumers can by enormous.
Some folks prefer wines that are very fruit-forward while others are dismissive of such wines, referring to them as “fruit bombs.” Many wine drinkers prefer cool climate wines because they are more astringent and acidic while other wine enthusiasts are put off by that style. Acidity in wines can vary a great deal and what is considered “right” for some drinkers will taste sour to others.
Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with having an opinion as to what constitutes a “balanced” wine, but I know of no “better” or “best” objective gauge.
Master taster Tim Hanni offers another definition of balance: “Balance is the subjective interrelationship between sweetnes/dryness, acidity, alcohol, tannins and intensity that provides the overall flavor profile of a wine. Good balance is determined by personal preference and expectations.”
It's clear that you know more about this than I do. But the idea is that there are some basic principles that serious wine people can agree on that are necessary for a well-made wine. (Unfortunately I do not recall what those principles are.) These are assessments of aspects of flavor, so perhaps "objective" wasn't the best word. Still, the idea was that these are principles that educated wine people can agree on, more or less. Even if they don't especially enjoy the wine, they can at least agree that it has good bones.
That's the kind of thing I mean. Basically, it's trying to bar the gates before the barbarians enter. I'm not comfortable with the idea that every person's opinion is equally valid. Some people are demonstrably idiots. What's the word, plonk? no doubt has many great fans, but that doesn't make it good wine.
Getting back to the initial claim, it's certainly true that a review is an aesthetic judgment, but not all aesthetic judgments are created equal. And it is possible to believe this without being a sanctimonious asshole.
Jim
Yes but put ten engineers (with degrees) in a room and you get ten different loudspeaker designs - one will make a horn that stands 10 feet high, another will give you an electrostatic panel, Another will give you a single driver, others will give you various boxes, another will give you an omni-directional, others will have all sorts of other variations - transmission lines, line arrays, open baffle and then others will give you something like Perfect 8 Technologies which is a blend of a bunch of them.Each engineer will tell you that their approach is the best approach and will give you enough technobabble to make it seemingly true. And if it sounds great you may opt to agree and if it sounds dreadful then you won't. Except that another reviewer who is just as experienced as you will buy the speaker you think is dreadful and will find your choice dreadful.
I said a while back that it's somewhat important for beginning audiophiles to audition the better examples of the various camps of speakers and amplifiers (and sources where possible). People hate horns because they heard $500 Klipsch models in big box chains - the better examples are far more difficult to audition as dealers don't want to take up the floor space - and WAF means the speakers need to be cutesy small things or have sleek shapes (which may not be best suited for actual sound reproduction).
Once they identify what they like better - a Quad, or a Western Electric horn, or a Single driver (Teresonic) or Wilson and the corresponding amp - big watt solid state, low watt SET, push pull tube, class B Naim, class T, SIT amps, etc (feedback/no feedback) then basically they have chosen whether they prefer white wine, red wine and which type of wine within the group etc Reviewers who are in line with those preferences will be useful to the particular reader.This is why Art Dudley, Bob Neill, Steven Rochlin, and Jack Roberts are "generally" more useful to me because I think they have quality ears. It doesn't mean I agree with them 100% but in general what they like I will like. They may have a list of 5 speakers where I like their 4th choice better than their 1st choice but chances are if we came up with a top 10 speakers list (of the ones we've all heard) 8 of them would be on both lists. Whereas if I did the same with Fremer or Jason Victor Serinus or John Valin, I doubt there would be a single speaker that we would have in common that would make both lists.
I do think reviewers are useful though - you get help from an experienced win drinker if you are getting into wines - if you don't like wine and you like scotch ask the scotch reviewer not the wine reviewer.
Edits: 04/14/14
"Each engineer will tell you that their approach is the best approach and will give you enough technobabble to make it seemingly true."
Here's what you do: ask each engineer what the three biggest problems with the approach that he has chosen are and what he has done to ameliorate them. Do record it so that the "technobabble" won't get muddied betwixt your ears and fingers.
Meanwhile ask yourself, if you are still on speaking terms: 'If any approach were truly superior in every way to all others then why would all intelligent folks not use it?'
"... I think they have quality ears. It doesn't mean I agree with them 100% but in general what they like I will like."
You first use "quality" as a noun and then use it adjectively. Are you trying to say that you, as opposed to most of us, have "quality" ears or do you mean that it's important to find reviewers that favor the same sonic qualities that you do?
If the latter I wholeheartedly agree, if the former, well...
Regards, Rick
Yes I was typing at work in a hurry before class. Quality ears came off as pompous - I meant the latter that they have hear it similar to me and I trust the quality/experience will likely be similarly preferred in the future.
But where is the fun in being so touchy feely diplomatic about these things - boring.
Therefore,
My opinion is the right one. So if you disagree - you are, indeed, a tone deaf hack. ;-)
All that wine stuff is a bag of nonsense, doesn't hold up in a DBT, embarrassing really.
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
It depends on the DBT. The standard triangle test (used to show how wine-tasters are unable to spot the difference between a good Saint-Émilion and a cheap bottle of 'plonk') fell out of favour with sensory scientists in the 1950s, when more reliable discrimination tests began to be used. These triangle tests sound 'sciency' enough to be convincing however, although when you start to follow the money to find out who's backing these tests, it ends up being the large manufacturers of cheap plonk.
Large, paired-comparison and duo-trio DBTs are judged to deliver better discrimination, but are not commonly run because the size of sample required and the costs that entails preclude their use, unless the test is backed by a large manufacturer of cheap wine. Strangely, the large manufacturers of cheap wine aren't that interested.
Generally, such tests conclude we are more capable of being able to discern a wider palette than these hobbled DBTs suggest, that our palette can be cultivated with experience and training, and that although there isn't a direct correlation between the cost of a bottle of wine and its quality, the "it's all nonsense" line is mostly nonsense.
Of course, when more reliable tests are published in journals of sensory science and oenology, they are routinely dismissed as self-serving in the public domain by shills for the larger wine producers, disseminating the information to 'useful idiots' in the process.
That might have changed in the ten or so years since I learned that snippet of information, but it's amazing what you can learn as a freelance production editor.
-
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus magazine, Lun-duhnn, Ingerland, innit
"Of course, when more reliable tests are published in journals of sensory science and oenology, they are routinely dismissed as self-serving in the public domain by shills for the larger wine producers, disseminating the information to 'useful idiots' in the process."The link in my original reply to Jim Austin does not work. This one does. The funding was financed with grants from the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Admittedly, it is a tiny sampling and not conclusive, but interesting nonetheless.
Edits: 04/16/14
...I was talking to someone who worked for them recently.
He said I would be surprised how many boutique California wineries buy juice from them to put into their wines.
According to him, most of them do.
To be called a particular appellation here, like Napa or Sonoma, it only needs 75% from that area.
The other 25% can come from anywhere.
If it says "California" then it has to be 100% from there.
> Large, paired-comparison and duo-trio DBTs are judged to deliver better
> discrimination, but are not commonly run because the size of sample
> required and the costs that entails preclude their use...
The same is as true for audio as it is for wine. If someone cuts corners
with blind testing in order to arrive at a predetermined result - there
are many such examples in the mainstream press - the situation is, as I
wrote many years ago in Stereophile, "blind testing is the last refuge of
the agenda-riven scoundrel." :-)
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Read Tim Hanni's book: "Why You Like the Wines You Like." Hanni is one of two Americans to first be awarded the title Master of Wine. He notes that the vast majority of those who have earned a "Master of Wine" designation actually prefer sweet wines over dry, but that’s a subject for another day.
Hanni explains that if you were to tell someone that the wine in glass A is a $4 concoction he will readily dismiss it as uninteresting. But if you suddenly say, “Whoops my bad, actually, that’s the $400 super-premium Napa Cab that no one can get their hands on,” it’s amazing and amusing how quickly the taster will discover new found respect for that wine. “Heh, heh, now it’s beginning to open up. Wow!”
Hanni recounts the night a friend brought a five thousand dollar magnum to his house for a dinner party. “It was a lovely wine,” says Hanni. The next day Kate, his wife, confronted him and demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me how expensive that wine is!”
Hanni says like any insensitive and stupid husband he asked, “What would that have mattered? It’s not as though someone is going to smell the wine and say, Wow!, this is worth thousands of dollars!”
His wife’s response was: “If I had known it was that special I would have paid more attention and enjoyed it more.”
Hanni says that, “She is, of course, right.”
There is a famous study that supports Kate’s position on knowing the value of a wine and how it affects one’s perception. See link below.
According to Stanford researchers when a person is told they are comparing a $5 wine with a $45 wine, when they are, in fact, sampling the same wine—the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker believes they are tasting the $45 wine.
I suspect the same is true for audio.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/baba
My in laws are wine lovers and we visit them once or twice a year. About 2000 or so they bought several cases of very good Bordeaux wines and we would have several bottles over the holidays. My father-in-law likes to keeo a journal regarding very good wines, so the only requirement was that we had to fill in tasting notes. We would discuss our thoughts about a wine, and at the end of dinner, I would write our consensus opinions. It was interesting to me that our opinions were quite consistent from year to year. Certainly not a blind tasting, and we typically paid more attention to the good stuff than the vin ordinaire that was the second and third bottles of the night, but I always felt like I could tell differences and preferences pretty clearly.
There certainly was some expensive stuff that I didn't care for very much, but almost all of the bottles had a distinct character.
Well how cool this is showing up on and audio discussion forum! Thanks for the nice plug for my book Regmac and it sounds like you enjoyed the material. I am also an OCD audiophile - Marsh and Emotiva pre and power, highly modded Bohlender-Graebner with modded Hsu subs, Fountek ribbon super-tweeters and Emotive mono-blocks, Njoe Tjube CD. What a wonderful pursuit!
Glad to do it, Tim. I've been passionate about wine for 40 years and i'm in the wine business (retail). A customer gave me your book as a gift and it has changed my perspective about wine. I also enjoyed your notion that the 100 point rating scale popularized by Parker and WS is really a 50 point scale. Everyone should read that chapter and take it to heart.
I've always thought a good review should lead our readers to AUDITION said piece of gear and see if they liked it either for the same reasons we did, or at least heard the same nuances, nothing more. Of course, you should trust your ears.
It's so disappointing when people think that we are all trying to brainwash them into buying gear they don't need, so we can be compensated by the evil manufacturers for doing so. I don't feel anyone should buy anything based on a review, I never have. But in the 80s and 90s before I started TONE, Stereophile and TAS certainly led me to a lot of great gear. Some I bought, some I didn't. But it was always really cool when I auditioned a piece of gear with some of the music they used in the review and heard similar nuances.
I'm always pleased when we get emails from our readers that have had the same experience. If we've helped lead you to a component that helps you enjoy your music collection more than you did before, then I feel that we've done our job.
Publisher, TONEAudio Magazine
And the system...
With one exception, where more expensive older whiskey of the same brand was definitely better (more complex) than younger one, I did not find ANY relation between price and quality.Of course, personal preferences play huge role, and someone else wouldn't rate stuff sourced from Lawrenceburg, IN - with its strong grassy taste, which I rather like - as high as I did.
Examples:
- High West Double Rye - $30 - very good;
- High West Rendezvous Rye - $48 - exceptional;
- Whistlepig - $60 - mediocre;
- George Dickel and Bulleit - both $25 - both good;
- Rittenhouse - $25 - very good;
- Ravenswood - $40 - DISGUSTING GARBAGE;
- Smooth Ambler - $35 - good.
Edits: 04/15/14
I'm more a Scotch person and don't buy much Bourbon . But I'm from Pennsylvania and I heard about the Michter distillery and that there would be no more beyond what was in the barrels and bottles. So when I found some a decade ago I bought 3 bottles of 16 year old and one 20 year old - good stuff, elegant almost like a great cognac but more soul.
It was an OK-to-good whiskey, main issue being oak overpowering every other subtle taste. Nowhere close to its price of $40 a bottle, considering alternatives that are available at $25-30.
Agree with the assessments of Whistlepig, Bulleit and Rittenhouse. Builleit Rye is a particularly good value. Look into Eagle Rare- another good value Bourbon.
Do not care for Michters at all.
Best,
Ross
... I decided to scratch them all from my shopping list.
Seems like Whistlepig is one of the best examples of what's available - and that means I'm not interested.
...also with white wine and a little added red color, tasters use red wine descriptors; i.e. they can't tell the difference.
I recall a TV show where a 2nd growth producer in France asked who were the 5 most important wine critics in the US were. He said Robert Parker and the other 4 don't matter.
...I suspect that is true, especially for France.
But even here winemakers changed to a big, fruit forward, high alcohol blockbuster wines to please him.
Glad to see he is not the force he once was (he's retiring) and we can get back to more subtle, layered and interesting wines with less than 15% alcohol.
When it comes to wine cartoons that is my all-time fave.
...we have wine humor appreciation in common ;->
...I always wonder what reference wine reviewers use.
The best cabernet you've ever tasted?
An imaginary perfect cabernet?
What the winemaker had in mind and whether he achieved it?
Or maybe whether you just like it a lot.
Different wine reviewers rate the same wine differently - in my wine tasting group I like complexity and balance, others rate on "drinkability".
At least with audio and music reproduction there is a reference for comparison.
Although musicality and drinkability may be similar.
Nice commentary.
Guess I really miss the old days when reviews were more in depth, provided context with similar products and offered cross commentary by others using different systems (and listening priorities).
...there during the good old days.
"An imaginary perfect cabernet?
"What the winemaker had in mind and whether he achieved it?"
"Perfect" for whom? Consider the following quotes from two wine experts:
Steve Heimoff: “Napa Cabernet: As good as it can get?”
"Well, these certainly are wines that have become spectacular in recent years…"
Dan Berger: “The collapse of Cabernet”
"For more than a decade I have hoped for a miracle. Then last week I realized the worst: Cabernet Sauvignon has changed so appreciably that we will never see it in the way we once did ... A long book could be devoted to this sad tale of decline."
Each expert has a large segment of wine connoisseurs and enthusiasts in his corner.
I'm still trying to figure out what that comparison to reviewing is all about.
But then don't you guys think about sex every 7 seconds? How do get anything done?
I've heard the 7 second thing is really just a myth. It's actually every 4 seconds.
:-)
...that's why men have difficulty multi-tasking.
They are always multi-tasking.
That depends on one's age. When I was young it may have been true, but now it's more like once a week or once every two weeks. The libido is sleeping a lot these days.
...a friend got checked for "low T" and the treatment was very successful.
'round here it ain't a problem of low T, but maybe a problem of low E.
See ya. Dave
Thanks. I actually spoke to my doctor recently and we will work out a treatment regimen.
To reduce the risk of prostate cancer men should ejaculate at least 4x per week.
...who told me that after he got a vasectomy some years ago, he told his wife the doctor said he had to have sex every night for a month.
Said it was the best month of his life...
...so she can be more concerned about my health.
See ya. Dave
My Doctor once told me "use it or lose it". ;-)
Cheers,
Al
the goal of golf is to perform an entire swing without thinking of sex. That is why it is so difficult a game. Men cannot concentrate that long.
P
As I slowly slip into the dark cesspool of audiophalia neurosis. . . .
My speaker building site
...I think it's that we think of sex every 7 seconds for only 4 seconds which leaves 3 to get all the work done
Sounds about right to me...
But that's just an average. When we're trying to convince someone that our choice of component is the best one, we don't think of sex for long time periods.
Mr. Kim calls in sick to work. 'Boss, I feel terrible, stomach hurt, head hurt, I can't come in to work'.
Boss says, 'We really need you here today. When I feel sick I go to my wife and make her give me sex, then I feel better'.
Mr. Kim calls back in an hour and says, 'Good idea, boss, I feel better and will be in soon'.
'By the way, you got nice house'.
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
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