Critic's Corner

Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry.

Use this form to submit comments directly to the Asylum moderators for this forum. We're particularly interested in truly outstanding posts that might be added to our FAQs.
You may also use this form to provide feedback or to call attention to messages that may be in violation of our content rules.

You must login to use this feature.

Inmate Login

By default, logging in will set a session cookie that disappears when you close your browser. Clicking on the 'Remember my Moniker & Password' below will cause a permanent 'Login Cookie' to be set.

Moniker/Username: The Name that you picked or by default, your email. Forgot Moniker?	Examples "Rapper", "Bob W", "joe@aol.com".
Password:	Forgot Password?
	Remember my Moniker & Password ( What's this?)

If you don't have an Asylum Account, you can create one by clicking Here.

Our privacy policy can be reviewed by clicking Here.

Inmate Comments

From:
Your Email:
Subject:

Message Comments

Original Message

Re: no gifts, no accomodation will result in better reviews

Posted by john curl on March 8, 2007 at 13:58:24:
Accomodation and loans are completely OK in the audio business.
The reasons are several:
First, manufacturers have to make something to sell at about 50% of the selling price or less. This must include: actual manufacturing costs, overhead, profit (if any) and advertising costs, as well as anything else that I might have overlooked.
IF a reviewer pays, let's say 50% of the retail cost of the unit, it hurts no one, because the only person who has been left out is the retail dealer, and perhaps a marketing firm who might get a percentage of each sale. The retail dealer still stands to gain by the additional exposure that this unit will be given by the audio reviewer, but that should be enough, because the retailer has not had to stock or demonstrate the item to the perspective buyer (the reviewer in this case)
The best audio equipment is costly, and will always remain costly, because of the cost of designing and building an exceptional audio product, and the way the unit has to be packaged in order to sell to discriminating audiopiles. They just won't take a tin box, drilled out in some garage, even if it does sound great, and this at least, doubles the cost of the unit.
In any case, accomodation is a tried and true way of dealing within the audio community, and it works.
What hurts is the demand for gifts or refusal to return (loaned) audio items submitted for review. That takes directly from the manufacturer, and often obligates the reviewer too. Also, small manufacturers can't keep up, if larger manufacturers can use gifts to promote their product and it will ultimately raise the cost of production, whereas accomodation does not do this, and large and small manufacturers can do this without loss to their income.