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In Reply to: RE: When awarding the "Absolute", I see nothing wrong with awarding a prototype posted by Bambi B on May 11, 2008 at 09:54:57
I start by stating the obvious: the magazine in question is a private enterprise and they can do as they damn well please. There is a classical recordings review magazine that will not cover non-advertisers--indeed, they even sell the cover. Nothing illegal about that. So, obviously, TAS can make up its own rules and then break them if they feel like it.
You put together some arguments in favor of allowing writers to award awards to prototypes, and those arguments pass the giggle test as far as courtroom advocacy goes.
However, history indicates that the result is terrible public policy. Now, again, TAS, Stereophile, and everybody else is free in this world to ignore the greater public good, overfish the streams, overgraze the commons, and dump sheep manure in the river. But I think that in exchange for our support, the magazines have an obligation not to screw up the ecology. And I think that the history is that TAS has a history of grabbing the quick easy glory and not caring what it means for the ecosphere. Speaking only for myself.
Stereophile's 5-dealer rule (which is fairly nuanced and admits of exceptions, and if you don't know them well, please refrain from responding until you read the explanation linked to below) means that a reviewer is not supposed to even have a prototype in his home. I think this sensible rule effectuates two items in the public interest.
One, it prevents a reviewer's vanity from entering into the process. Gee, I am so special, they have chosen l'il ol' me to hear their one and only prototype. In the same way, when the manufacturer solicits and at least pretends to act upon a reviewer's opinion, it gives the reviewer a vested interest in the validation of HIS opinions. All this is very bad. I think TAS hit a then-new low during the extended process by which HP as much as de facto served as a development consultant to the rapidly-evolving Pipedreams loudspeaker.
Secondly, giving awards to prototypes means that one and only one man's opinion creates a huge distortion in the marketplace. The manufacturer now knows that he will have an easier time rounding up dealers, while dealers are more at risk to the temptation not to listen for themselves, but rather to grab the low-hanging fruit--hey, it isn't built yet but it's already got an award!
Stereophile's 5-dealer rule means that before a reviewer unboxes the product, at least five and likely many more dealers have heard the product and made up their own minds, unswayed by whether any (Stereophile at least) reviewer likes it. They make their minds up the old-fashioned way: is the sound quality (plus all the other attributes) such that we can make money selling it? To have five genuine brick and mortar dealers provides a meaningful reassurance that the product is real, the teething troubles are over, and the company can provide dealer and customer service. And if a manufacturer can't get five dealers, perhaps their reasons why not will improve the product, if the manufacturer keeps at it.
Part of the sadness here is that when he is doing his job, HP can listen and put into words what he hears. I had to fight to get him to listen to the Wilson Benesch ACT Ones, and when he finally did, he isolated an aspect of performance that had gone right past me--image size. After reassessing, I decided that I really didn't care all that much about image size, proper timbre trumped all. OK for me. But he caught that. When a prototype gets an award, that kind of depth of opinion is not likely to have taken place.
Furthermore, doesn't opening up the lists to non-real products mean that the stakes in bribing a reviewer aren't just that much higher, while the costs might be even lower. For the money it would cost you to ship products all over the country and visit dealers all over the country, or even just the time and strain if you drive yourself and sleep in your car, as some have done, you can just load your trunk with a bottle or three of Petrus or The Grange, pay down your Amex so you can pay the bill at The French Laundry, and, hey presto, one-stop shopping. And in this regard, I am speaking purely hypothetically, from a philosophical standpoint that human nature has no history and is not perfectable in this life.
Finally, ultimately, such a step makes a potentially-worthy could-be-product a meta-topic for discussion, and it becomes a lightning rod.
I much prefer to hear from an importer that he can't fill all his orders now, let's talk next year.
Later,
JM
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