Stereophile and the love of hotel decor
I often appreciate the Stereophile review of industry shows but one thing that always bothers me is the choice of images. They often lead with a full-system image which is usually 80% hotel curtains and rugs. That is, there's a speaker in the left, the system in the middle and another speaker on the right. That's fine but if you look at the image as a whole, the area of the image that is covered by gear is about 20% or less. The rest is invariably 1980's hotel curtains and rugs.
Once you see it that way there’s no going back, your eyes see the curtains and rugs forever.
I really wish they’d focus on more interesting close-ups or even montages.
Here is a perfect recent example. Two speakers, gear in the middle. If we cover up the gear, 80% of this image is the hotel room. Even if you wanted to have speaker to speaker coverage, what point is there in including so much carpet and window in this shot?
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I remember those shots. To refresh my mind I went back to look for an example. The first show I found was The Absolute Sound show report July/August this year. Not a single curtain shot… all close ups. I went looking for a Stereophile show article and gave up but I remember them. Thanks @erik_squires… I can stop looking.
A reason these wide shots are useful is to put the look and scale in context. With only a shot if a speaker it is harder to get a feeling for size. Also, it gives you a feel for how bad the acoustics might have been for a person listening to the system. You can alway find lots of color glossy promo shots… in the same issue usually. |
I agree with the idea that a sense of scale is important, but I’d trade sexy for scale, and you can usually get that from a single speaker shot. Take a look at the picture I took above for instance. Nothing in the room gives any sense of scale at all except perhaps the power strip to the right of the amp. In this case I don't think we can tell much by seeing it all. I'd prefer show coverage to be sexy first, and encyclopedic second honestly. |
