You're not in the minority, and your experiences mirror those of many of the rest of us. This is the challenge with electronics. If we were evaluating the quality of a pizza, it likely wouldn't matter whether we were evaluating a particular pizza while sitting in a dining room or on someone's front porch, or whether it was served on stainless steel plates or Japanese porcelain - it's going to taste how it's going to taste. But electronics can't be evaluated in a vacuum - too many variables completely independent of the item in question affect the item in question.
I use reviews to gather ideas, learn about features, and at most to get relative comparisons. If a reviewer is comparing speaker A vs. B in the same room on the same amp, and one is much brighter, that's helpful to me and it gives me a parameter to investigate further. But I've seen forum posts that really highlight how crazy and illogical peoples' evaluations can be. A couple of days ago I read a forum post where someone called one amp exciting and referred to another amp as lifeless - but the two amps were in two different places, and he heard them through two different kinds of speakers!! Even leaving aside the differences in how we ear things individually, think about the insanity of that comparison. So no, it's not surprising that you're hearing very different things than a reviewer in a different room with different ears. Happens to all of us, all the time.
I use reviews to gather ideas, learn about features, and at most to get relative comparisons. If a reviewer is comparing speaker A vs. B in the same room on the same amp, and one is much brighter, that's helpful to me and it gives me a parameter to investigate further. But I've seen forum posts that really highlight how crazy and illogical peoples' evaluations can be. A couple of days ago I read a forum post where someone called one amp exciting and referred to another amp as lifeless - but the two amps were in two different places, and he heard them through two different kinds of speakers!! Even leaving aside the differences in how we ear things individually, think about the insanity of that comparison. So no, it's not surprising that you're hearing very different things than a reviewer in a different room with different ears. Happens to all of us, all the time.