Audio reviews: too many analogies, never simple, but most of all, never clear.

yep, sometimes I get to the end of a review and wonder if he/she liked it or not.
Australian Hi-Fi magazine continues to be a good informative read. A nice balance of technical, listening and lab measurements.
Descriptions of their listening rooms and other equipment used to evaluate are always included along with the type or style of music listened to.At the end of the review they always have a few dot points of what they thought was great and also a few not so greats.
My only bugbear is that they don't focus enough on sub $2000 gear and in that, they are not alone.
That Jules Coleman review of the Sonus Faber speakers is just ridiculous! Thanks for alerting me to someone to avoid.

For myself, I am not really interested in reading about equipment that is 2K or less.  

that's fine. Plenty are.
It is a bit low in hindsight, I was going to put sub $5000 but who am I to judge?
I would wager that there are more interested in that price point than say $20,000 and up.
To each his own.

This is a great thread for me! Lots of good info in here for me to take to the next time I do a review.  Thank You!

I posted my first review a few days ago after working on the written portion for 2 weeks. Its actually much harder than I thought. It started out with too much fluff, silly analogies and stupid jokes.  I continually whittled it down and did my best to just get to the point. Editing it was another difficult task.

After working on it for days to try to make it perfect, I decided to go ahead and post it. Of course I start off with a misspelling right in the title; Daaaang it!!! Then I also of course forget to post my link to pictures and description of associated equipment; Double Daaaang it!!  I did post a link to the written review as well as a link to pictures in the Speakers section but....

Oh well, theres always next time to do better. In my defense, I snapped my tibia and fibula clean through, last week, a la Anderson Silva and am hopped up on oxy 🥵

Unfortunately the state of HiFi reviewing (and other hobbyist reviews) is corrupt.  Too many competing agendas, too much manipulation, bribes and so on.   I began to take offense when too many political views were included in audio component reviews.  I sent a few letters into publications asking a simple question:  How do the political views of the reviewer improve my understanding of the quality of the component under review ?    You can substitute aesthetic/dining/travel etc preferences for "political views".   Some editors did not respond, the rest responded with basically the same answer: "free speech" .  No one gave a direct answer.  Oh Well.

I have read audio publications for a long time.   I like some reviewers and tolerate others.  My experience is to read reviews over time to understand the preferences (biases ?) of the reviewer.  A gross example would be a tube and vinyl friendly reviewer now addressing a class D amp driven by digital streaming.  Will the resulting review be accurate and does the reviewer have enough experience to determine the absolute quality of the components under review ?    Reading the review in the abstract you would not know, but if you are familiar with the reviewer and their style then you can easily pull relevant information and leave the filler behind.

Several comments referenced 6Moons.   Well they are potentially among the worst offenders.  1) the owner is on record as stating that unless a component blows up in testing, or has completely incomprehensible ergonomics, it will not receive a negative review.  2) unless the reviewer is an audio designer/engineer, or has demonstrated professional expertise in the area of design under review, then the reviewer is not qualified to give a negative review 3) the power of the press is substantial.  A negative review can put a company out of business thus he (the owner of 6m) does not want to be responsible for ending someone's business- hence a negative review will not be published  4) they are pay to play:  want a review- buy an ad on the site.    ALL of the above can be confirmed through web search.   Hey- at least they are honest !