reading reviews from audioreview.com, do people actually demo the equip.? (1 Viewer)

[ToddJoseph]

Have you actually gone through audioreview.com and reviewed what people are saying about themselves? What I don't understand is why you would give a piece of equipment a 2 out of 5 stars? That just means that you bought that piece of equipment without thoroughly auditioning it, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

I spent almost a yr auditioning equipment, reading specs, and reading what people who did the same thing that I was doing said about the piece of equipment I was investigating. I work too hard for my money just to go to any store and pick something off the shelf just to take it home and it just doesn't sound good or whatever.

So when your reading a review, and that person gave it a 2 out of 5 stars, (Especially for speakers) you need to really think about that persons intelligence, and keep reading on.

Then you go and look at the reviews of these so called high-end pieces of equipment that cost people 5K and up and they give that piece of equipment 2 out of 5 stars???? If Im spending that type of money, it better walk, talk and serve me dinner. It just better be the best sounding system I have ever heard.

Different strokes for different folks, but come on people, review all pieces of equipment before buying. Otherwise you have no one else to blame but yourself

 

[Chuck C]

ya, it gets real annoying over there...you just gotta weed out the bad reviews and take the good reviews for what they're worth.

 

[Saurav]

Then you go and look at the reviews of these so called high-end pieces of equipment that cost people 5K and up and they give that piece of equipment 2 out of 5 stars???? If Im spending that type of money, it better walk, talk and serve me dinner. It just better be the best sounding system I have ever heard.

Well, just because someone put up a review of $5000 speakers doesn't mean they bought it, does it? I could have spent months listening to several different sets of speakers at different dealers, and then posted reviews of all of them. Obviously I liked one and picked that one, but it's conceivable that I didn't like some of the others and posted low scores on them. On the reviews I've read where people posted low scores on something they've actually bought, they usually say that they returned that component and got something else.

I agree with you, if I spent $5K on a component, it better be excellent. However, that doesn't mean that all $5K components are excellent, and peoples' tastes vary, so I think a 2/5 rating for expensive equipment is quite possible.

Having said that, Audioreview does have a problem, and that's all the troll reviews on there. It takes a lot of time to find the meaningful ones hidden in all the junk.

 

[Marvin]

That just means that you bought that piece of equipment without thoroughly auditioning it, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Not necessarily. Sometimes there's nobody nearby selling the speakers (or receivers) you're considering. I remember asking on this board for speaker recommendations and getting a lot of good suggestions, none of which were carried by Circuit City (that was about all we had up around here at the time).

But I agree that a lot of the audioreview reviews are pretty worthless.

 

[Martice]

It can get quite brutal but you do understand that there's many different levels of involvement regarding audio don't you?

Many people buy because of hype and hear say anyway & like the above poster said you just have to weed through the bad ones and take the informative ones for what they are worth regardless if it's from a professional or J6P.

 

[GordonL]

You gotta take reviews from any source with a grain of salt. It's common to read reviews (even in this forum) where the reviewer compares two or more pieces from different manufacturers, manufacturers who have excellent reputations and products, products that have undisputed high performance and are well regarded by professional reviewers, but, the piece that person buys "seems" to be night and day better than the rest of the competition! From the way people post their reviews, you'd think everything is junk except for what they bought!

 

[Vishwa Somayaji]

In most cases you can make out the real reviews from the fake ones. A lot of the fake reviews get there to "even out" the score. In other words, if I am a fan of brand A and I see that brand C and D are getting 5 stars I go there and give it them 2 stars to "even the score". Of course, it works the other way too. I used read those. But, these days it is getting harder and harder to find any objective reviews there.

 

[Darell_Land]

I used to surf the audioview a lot and have found it slowly getting worse every time I go there. I find most review sites all the same and given up on them. I read this Fourm and a couple others now and the Info here is a lot more real than any place I can find, I also get a lot of good advise and info on Stuff I never really gave much thought too.

 

[MatthewJ S]

The problem is that many people take the written word as gospel and also believe that these reviewers are unbiased...the sad fact is that now we have e-marketers posing as regular folks to get add space (beware the opinions with links). I see people shopping with audio review print-outs in one hand and consumer reports in the other!

 

[Karim Nogas]

The only thing I've found audioreview good for now is getting a quick MSRP without having to make several phone calls or a post here.

 

[Jeffrey_Jones]

I find the most helpful part of Audio Review to be the price paid listing. Althought many people lie, it still gives the consumer an edge when they begin negotiating on equipment.

Jeff

 

[Jon_B]

I agree with Vishwa. It seems that if a product begins to receive too many good reviews someone who has a different product will jump in to stop it from getting a perfect rating. It's sad that there's people like that in the world.

Jon

 

[Martice]

The two greatest tools a consumer has is time and the in home demo money back guarantee. Whatever gear you plan to buy is only as good as it sounds in your system, regardless of price and hype.

Do your homework.

Try to weed out what's real and what's emotion when listening to your gear. A lot of times people pass up good gear because it didn't live up to the "HYPE" that it was supposed to although it did exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place.

Many times people buy bad gear or gear that is not really cracked up to what it says it is but people swear by it because of "HYPE" and some have taken those views to the grave when they should infact be taking that piece of gear and throwing it in the grave.

In short, consumer and some "professional" audioreview sites are only as reliable as the screen you see it on. However, if you take time to put together a synergistic system with realistic expectations on performance, you should be a happy camper for a long time to come and realize that there are far more choices for you as a consumer regarding audio and video.

 

[Marcelo T]

Well, I usually have another use for audioreview. I try to search if a product has some sort of recorrent problem, if the manufacturer solved the problem, this kind of stuff.

 

[John Morris]

Marcelo: Bingo! That's what I use it for too. Not too long ago I was researching Carousel CD players and saw repetitive posts on one unit that noted that the drawer broke and would stick after about a year of use. Comments like "just when the warranty expired, the dang drawer broke", seen repeatedly, told me that I needed to look at other players.

 

[Pete Jennings]

AudioReview.com lost control a long time ago. Their rating system is useless. The number of duplicate posts and flat out childish reviews by teenagers high on AOL borders on pathetic. Half of the reviewers must have been thrown out of AOL chat-rooms and have no place else to go! The only thing I use AudioReview for is to get a feel for pros and cons of a particular piece of equipment, and that takes a whole lot of distilling of horsecrap to get to it. I would NOT let AudioReview's ratings affect a purchase.

They really should have more aggressive administrators over there!

My $.02

Pete

 

[NickSP]

Agree with Pete, Saurav and John. I think the problem arises when someone buys lets say a $1000 receiver and then goes somewhere and listens to a $500 receiver and can't tell the difference, for whatever reasons. He then gets a buyers remorse and gives the product a 2/3 out of 5 stars because he can't see the value in the $1k receiver.

Same goes for speakers and other HT equipment.

Of course there are always those idiots who bash other brands just for the heck of it.

 

[BryanZ]

Half the reviews on some of the longer ones on AR are duplicates too. There have been several that were submitted multiple times. For example, one item may have 50 reviews, but 10 of those were from one person, 8 say that it sucks and don't say why, 10 come back to try and put the rating to where it should be so they give it a meaningless 5 stars, and 15 heard the item briefly in BB or CC without an extended listening session. Out of 50 reviews, a maximum of 8 have any meaning whatsoever. You have to read them carefully and sort out the good ones from the bad, subtract the dupicate reviews and toss the meaningless ones and subtract one high score and one low score from the ones left and that may leave you with a decent idea of how the product actually performed.

 

[MatthewJ S]

And the "good" ones are probably written by pro e-marketers and add stockers!