The Reviewer’s Fallacy: When critics aren’t critical enough

[Musicophile]

Since I started systematically reviewing music on my blog, I actually thougtabout this problem quite a bit. 

 

Some observations from my side:

 

I agree with the statement above that reviews are essentially subjective. Even professional critics that have years of experience and writing well reasoned reviews often completely contradict each other.  So what to make of this? My way out is to find reviewers I like and often agree with. My biggest overlap is with the French magazine Classica, and to a lesser extent with Gramophone. So I check out both. With music it is easier than with equipment as thanks to streaming we now can sample everything and don’t have to buy blindly any more. 

[Musicophile]

7 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Subjective music reviews are fine  but I expect an equipment review to describe different aspects of its performance. Of speakers I want to know about things like tonal balance, distortion at high volumes, low level detail, driver and cabinet resonances, dispersion characteristics, driver integration...

This one is a reasonable example:

 

S100-HiFi+News.pdf

I'm not so sure one can be much more objective on gear review than on music or other art. But I agree, good reviews are very descriptive.