Turntables and Trusting Online Reviews

If you're gonna read reviews you have to read all the reviews. What I mean is you have to read enough to get a handle on the reviewers. Yes even the reviews of the $600k speakers you will never see let alone buy. Yes even the $16k Koetsu even though you only care about digital. Because this is how you learn where each reviewer is coming from, what they mean, how they see and relate to things.

Also at the same time you have to actually go and listen to a lot of stuff. So you can relate your experience to theirs. Then in only a few years time you might maybe have put together a pretty good picture of what's going on and finally be able to read a review and glean some really actionable guidance. Until then they are at best a filter to help you decide what to audition, at worst misleading infomercial ad copy.

Its worth all that trouble in the long run because an awful lot of the best components simply are not out there where you can just go and check them out. My first Basis turntable was bought on the basis (heh) of reviews. Heck, I even talked it over on the phone with uber reviewer Michael Fremer! My Melody integrated, Koetsu Black Goldline, Origin Live Conqueror arm and Herron VTPH 2A phono stage were all bought entirely off reviews. Some of these have been with me over a decade now, with no plans to replace any of them, ever.

But getting to where that was possible, besides the decades of reading all kinds of reviews, every single one of these also involved reading essentially all the reviews. And I mean all. Including every comment on every audio forum my search engine could find. 

You don't just, oh good review, one-click purchase. Recipe for disaster.

michaelr23 writes:

Or it really does come down to audition with your own ears because not only can you not know what another prefers, they may or may not be honest in their own right?

Help me out here?

Bingo! We have a winner!

And it has ALWAYS been this way!

There's an art to reading reviews. A big part of it is you need to develop your own internal hierarchy of veracity. Like, reviewer says turntable has 4 feet, great, it probably has 4 feet. Reviewer says they are rubber, okay maybe. Reviewer starts jabbering about how they isolate vi-, I have tuned so far out my eyes are already scanning to see if there's anything left worth reading at all. Because at that point all the reviewer is telling me is a) they can regurgitate ad copy and b) they think they can mislead me with technobabble.

Let that last bit sink in. Lotta guys fall for the technobabble. Most, even, far as I can tell.

But I feel for you. 25 years ago I was right there. Trying to choose between a Basis with a Graham arm and a VPI. Reviews helped me narrow it down but I just couldn't find one to audition- and I KNOW you MUST audition so.... wrote Michael Fremer and... dude called me back. So yeah even I who knows better had to rely on a reviewer.

(Which Mikey to his credit did NOT recommend one or the other to me but even more valuable helped me to clear up a lot of what I was already thinking, enabling me to make the right decision myself- what a reviewer SHOULD be doing!)

Another bit to let sink in, this was 25 years ago. Which means, among other things, no internet. There was no Stereophile On-Line there was only Stereophile On-Dead-Tree. Which in case you forgot (or ever knew) meant there were editorial standards. In order to get published you had to get past an editor. Not like today. Today you hit Post Your Response, you're published!

No wonder there are "reviewers" like this one clown I know, who after 30 years still can't build an interconnect. But he's got one serious audiophile Jones, and there's dudes with crap to sell willing to send him some for free if he'll shovel some drivel their way.

The good news however is you are looking at turntables. Skip the Bose crap like VPI, focus on specialty makers like Kuzma and Origin Live that have been around a long time. (Because if you can survive without advertising, reviews, and a big dealer network it can only be because your product is your advertising.) And budget yourself into a realm where success is virtually guaranteed. $2500 is barely getting there- too much of the purchase price is going into packaging, shipping, and handling. Seriously. That's just reality. $2500 each for table and arm, now you're talking. New, that is.