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Jeff Fritz/ULTRAaudio weighs in on long-term loaners.

Posted by bjh (A) on March 6, 2007 at 09:40:36

A good read in which Fritz doesn't shy from stating his opinioins, e.g:

"So when an advertising avenue -- and make no mistake, companies see reviewer loans as advertisements -- is open to some and closed to others, can the playing field really be equal?"

"The trouble with this is that a liberal "policy" of long-term loans will inevitably attract the wrong type of person to the field."

"I don’t think it’s healthy for writers to seek out long-term loans of equipment. Asking for something to be given to you that you can’t afford but would "like to have" doesn’t make the reviewing process more pure or more accurate, but that it has at least the potential to taint that process can’t be denied."

Seems that in the current battle of differentiation now all the rage (e.g. we're more ethical than them, bla-bla-bla) that Fritz seeks to leapfrog the positions of *both* TAS and Stereophile.

Personally I find he makes many good, but obvious, points, things that only a pure as the driven snow idealist would care to deny I imagine, yet from a real world perspective I see no great need to even seek squeaky clean conditions via bullet-proof policy.

For example, given that not all reviewers are independently wealthy I see good utility in the practice of long term loaners. Ritz's idea that this will attract the "wrong type" seems a little overblown, i.e. a good subjectivist reviewer tends to reveal as much about himself as the equipment so it's unlikely some crude opportunist is going to rise to the rank of top [read TAS/SF] reviewer anyway.

Note that I said unlikely. I'm certainly not saying they're all angles, e.g. there may be some truth to the current brouhaha about misconduct by a TAS rviewer and editorial coverup, yet the related Chinese Whispers issued by members of Stereophile have done more to damage their own reputations than anything else IMHO.

Back to loaners, for me it is a simple question of disclosure, something which for me is so intuitively obvious that protestations against, whatever they might be, i.e. I believe Atkinson essentially stated he felt such was unnecessary, are as silly as, say, some rabid objectivist claiming that all amplifiers sound the same!

I have credit Ritz for one thing... he did managed to state his opinion without issuing Chinese Whispers!

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher

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