Readers Beware!

A quote from Earl Geddes' book:
"A good listening test can take months to do right, and it can be very costly. This is probably the single biggest reason for the use of simplified listening tests like those
found in magazine reviews and the like. But here, like all else, you get what you pay for. A short quick listening test is likely to produce imprecise and often unreliable results. Nothing can replace time and effort in the search for truth.

No, clearly, I am not a fan of many of the current practices for the evaluation of audio components.
I think that the underlying motives are a clear indication of the potential for corruption of the data in
these circumstances. Seldom, if ever, are these tests performed without external pressures on the results. In the case of magazine reviews, the magazines need to stay in
business and that requires advertisers. The advertisers need to stay in business and that requires sales. To get sales you have to have consumers willing to spend their money on your product. And finally to entice the willing consumers you have to provide positive reviews. Hence we have a nicely packaged self-serving situation. Magazines give good reviews to the advertisers, and the advertisers
make good money from the sale of their products and hence buy more advertisement. Everyone is happy, except maybe the consumer– who may not have been treated with the utmost respect in this scenario.

Consider what would happen if the advertisers got bad reviews. The advertiser’s customers would not buy their products and they would go out of business. The magazine
would lose its advertisers and they too would go out of business. Where is the incentive for honesty in a situation like this? Even the reviewer who places a high priority on personal integrity (and I don’t doubt that many if not most fit into this category) may be unconsciously pulled to find something nice to say. I sympathize with the reviewers job, its a tough line to walk. Audio has lived with this incestuous situation for so long that it has gotten out of hand. The manufacturers have come to learn that they can often simply buy a good review through sufficient advertising dollars, hence many of them do. But this costs money, money which has to be added to the sales price. So in the end it’s the consumer who ends up subsidizing the very market that is picking their pocket by providing unreliable evaluations of the market’s products.

There is simply no incentive to bring reality into this situation–at least not from the magazines and manufacturers sales and marketing standpoint. Much of the audio market, from my perspective, promotes dis-information simply because
confusion and ignorance are sure ways to keep the consumer from catching on to what is really going on."

My advice: Do check out the list of advertisers (especially those who have purchased expensive ads) before reading any publication. That's one protection against being ripped off. The other is this forum