What should be mandatory in every professional published review-


When testing a company's newest amp, preamp, etc, and it is a refinement of a prior product that was on the market, ie, a Mark II, an SE version, a .2 etc, it should be mandatory that the review includes a direct comparison with the immediate predecessor. IMHO, it's not enough to know ion the product is good; it's also important to know if there is a meaningful difference with the immediate predecessor.

I'm  fan of Pass Labs, and I just looked at a review of an XP22 preamp. I find it very disturbing that there was no direct comparison between the XP22 and the XP20. And this lack of direct comparison is ubiquitous in hi-end published reviews, across all brands of gear tested. I don't blame the gear manufacturers, but rather the publications as I view this as an abdication of journalistic integrity.

 

Opinions welcome- 

128x128zavato

I took this a question of what one wants in a review not exactly a mandatory edict. It’s not “communist” yet! Assuming most of the peeps here are Euro or American. 

Most of you donno no English and no math unfortunately.

A professional is a person possessing a skill to make a living on.

For example "Truck Driver".

here's the issue.  very few of the reviewers you know make their living reviewing.

They are published, yes.  Might even get a few bucks for a piece. but they have real jobs. Its a hobby

i stopped reading stereophile because i got tired of the lack of detail in their speaker [listener] reviews. oh sure there is a detailed tech section, but i wanted the reviewer to tell me some basic user info, such as if the speaker is on the mellow or harsh side of neutral, how well the bass section reproduces organ pedal notes, the quality of stereophonic imaging esp. off to the side, the clarity of specific frequency ranges, dynamic limitations, et al. what i got instead was descriptions of how a given system played obscure records in their collection that are not likely to be easily found, this didn't tell me how the speaker would likely sound with more general kinds of music in my listening room. 

 

here’s the issue. very few of the reviewers you know make their living reviewing. They are published, yes. Might even get a few bucks for a piece. but they have real jobs. Its a hobby

@itsjustme That’s absolutely true, and it certainly was with me. But it’s also true that we’ve gotten to hear lots of gear in our own systems and in our own rooms so we have lots of experience in a real apples-to-apples comparison environment that we know well. That gives us a big leg up on people who usually only get to hear equipment in varied systems and rooms that introduces far too many variables combined with rapidly-fading aural memory that severely taints the audition and decision process. Any piece I reviewed I had a comparable piece to compare it to in my review system. Plus, every reviewer needs to be able to express in words the things they hear in ways that prospective buyers can relate to and use to help make more informed purchase decisions. Deride us as just hobbyists if you will, but we’re all in the same boat as you and most of us just want to provide useful information to others in the hope it could possibly be helpful. And trust me, we ain’t in it for the money cause we’d mostly all starve if that was the case. My advice — find reviewers who you trust and seem to be real and use them for useful information, because their impressions can be extremely helpful especially in this world of disappearing dealerships. Just my $0.02 FWIW.