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In Reply to: RE: I agree with you, for what it's worth, and don't think most of the responses to your thread so far are . . . posted by JoshT on July 10, 2014 at 11:18:01
My favorite dealer in Canada noted that a good 90% of customers already know what they want to buy before they listen. They like the price, looks and can see glowing reviews - good enough for them. They don't bother to make deep comparisons to other gear in the store they didn't read about.
I suspect there are a lot of folks buying magazines and reading reviews that don't come to forums.
Follow Ups:
instance, does this forum attract? Opinions here may be a piece of the puzzle, but there is no sub for listening. And listening in one's home.
Even then, it get's tricky.
You read a glowing review of an amp (for discussion's sake) here. You listen to it in a store; it sounds good with THOSE components. You take it home to YOUR components.
What are the chances it will sound good on all systems, considering the varieties of all the ancillary equipment AND your individual listening space?
Small.
Very small.
I'd say psychology plays a very strong role in all this, but my flame retardant suit already has been severely compromised….
Agreed but the problem is you can't bring "everything" home to listen to for weeks at a time to try out. A speaker in your living room 3 feet from the side and back walls may not be remotely the ideal spot for another speaker.
You find a reviewer you generally agree with most of the time. Follow that reviewer. The rest of the magazine is to bring you some information on what's new, what's interesting, and occasionally what's absurd.
Ancillary components is bang on right - I have heard my AN J/Spe speakers on a variety of amplifiers - if I had heard the speaker with some of those sources and amps I would not have bought the speakers.
I had that experience with Roksan. Every store that I auditioned Roksan amps in had speakers that gave me an unfavourable view of the amp. (when it was the speakers in most cases the likely culprit. When I brought Roksan's speakers home with their amp and their CD player I got to finally hear what Roksan is actually striving for and what their ":house sound" actually is all about - which was entirely different than every audition in fish out of water set-ups.
I personally favour complete audio system reviews from one maker - the simple reason for that preference is that it is likely to sound fairly similar in your room as mine - assuming the designer is competent and tries to design gear to work in a variety of listening rooms rather than how it looks in an enechoic chamber or a computer measurement plot. Further it allows readers to test what the reviewer says. You can listen to a complete Roksan system - so can I and you're covering more variables. I had a set of AN K speakers with a Sugden and AN OTO amp placed in corners per manual and toed in per manual. I then heard the same speakers in a shootout a guy was conducting who calls himself the dood and he was running 200 watt SS Odyssey amplifiers, the speakers were in a LARGE living room 5 feet from the rear walls - no side walls and sitting right beside a floorstanding speaker - he also had weights placed on the top of the speakers. WTF? It sounded thin rather bright at times - lean. Completely different/worse experience.
Sounds like how many people buy a car. If they actually cared about quality many would not be driving what they just bought. Nearly a million recalls can't be wrong.
Jim Tavegia
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