The Brinkman Ship MQA Listening Results

[kumakuma]

16 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Look guys. You want to know why pro review publications like everything and hardly ever put out strongly negative opinions? It’s because YOU THE READERS don’t LIKE hearing negativity about a piece of gear you bought or a fan of.

 

It's good that we've got your negativity to counterbalance all those positive reviews.

[Samuel T Cogley]

25 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Look guys. You want to know why pro review publications like everything and hardly ever put out strongly negative opinions? It’s because YOU THE READERS don’t LIKE hearing negativity about a piece of gear you bought or a fan of.

 

You mean like you calling the OP of this thread a liar?  Pot. Kettle. Black.

[botrytis]

27 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Look guys. You want to know why pro review publications like everything and hardly ever put out strongly negative opinions? It’s because YOU THE READERS don’t LIKE hearing negativity about a piece of gear you bought or a fan of.

 

Sorry, no. The magazines DON'T want to lose ADVERTISING DOLLARS or be sued and this is especially true in the US. If you read, for example, Auto magazines from the UK, they don't mince words at all. I remember reading one, 5-6 yrs ago on a trip and one review was titled, "Her name is Rio and she is crap!". Very honest and breath of fresh air.

 

If reviewers and magazines were more honest (or perceived honesty) about the reviews, they might find their readership going up not down.

 

We know they fawn over all the big high price brands, but we could use more reviews for the masses. Not all of us want to spend what we pay for a car, to buy a pair of loudspeakers, for example.

[GUTB]

3 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

Sorry, no. The magazines DON'T want to lose ADVERTISING DOLLARS or be sued and this is especially true in the US. If you read, for example, Auto magazines from the UK, they don't mince words at all. I remember reading one, 5-6 yrs ago on a trip and one review was titled, "Her name is Rio and she is crap!". Very honest and breath of fresh air.

 

If reviewers and magazines were more honest (or perceived honesty) about the reviews, they might find their readership going up not down.

 

We know they fawn over all the big high price brands, but we could use more reviews for the masses. Not all of us want to spend what we pay for a car, to buy a pair of loudspeakers, for example.

 

I’m sorry, but there’s how many high end audio magazines in print today — two? They don’t survive in this day and age by just shilling for whoever puts up full page ads. They survive because the ears that write for them have a degree of trustworthiness and experience that keeps people reading.

[Spacehound]

Just now, GUTB said:

 

I’m sorry, but there’s how many high end audio magazines in print today — two? They don’t survive in this day and age by just shilling for whoever puts up full page ads. They survive because the ears that write for them have a degree of trustworthiness and experience that keeps people reading.

That's an opinion, same as everyone  else stuff is. It's not a 'fact'.

[crenca]

"....They survive because the ears that write for them have a degree of trustworthiness and experience that keeps people reading...."

 

That is what I find interesting about the phenomena of MQA and its relationship not only to the big two trade publications, but the "high end" industry in general.  The culture (and thus the "trust" to which you refer) of these publications and the industry in general rests on certain assumptions and unstated agreements.  However, MQA has stressed this culture in several ways.  It overplayed its hand and has caused real damage.  Whereas Stereophile and TAS were before viewed by most as at least reliable "sounds like" subjectivist reporting organs (even for the increasingly "objective" audiophile), MQA has shown that they can't even do that - they put the industry (and their relationship to it) first, second and third.  They don't even have a mechanism to understand what actual consumers hear, and how consumers evaluate and judge things overall!  The staff and writers imagine themselves to be just another audiophile, one who happens to write reviews.  However, MQA has revealed them to be so biased and skewed toward the industry (for whatever reasons, known and unknown) they are truly befuddled as to why we consumers can't hear what they hear.  There must be something wrong with us, or it's a political conspiracy of the forums, or it is even uncontained "hate", etc.  DRM, formats - why would real audiophiles be concerned with such things?

 

It is not that MQA will break this culture - it is too entrenched for any one thing to change it, but MQA has certainly stressed it and shifted it.  Consumers now understand just how homogenous the "industry insider" culture is, despite a few rebels like the late Charles Hanson.  We also now have no reason to even trust the trade publications "sounds like" evaluations as they can't even get these almost completely subjectivised affairs right...

[Brinkman Ship]

13 minutes ago, crenca said:

"....They survive because the ears that write for them have a degree of trustworthiness and experience that keeps people reading...."

 

That is what I find interesting about the phenomena of MQA and its relationship not only to the big two trade publications, but the "high end" industry in general.  The culture (and thus the "trust" to which you refer) of these publications and the industry in general rests on certain assumptions and unstated agreements.  However, MQA has stressed this culture in several ways.  It overplayed its hand and has caused real damage.  Whereas Stereophile and TAS were before viewed by most as at least reliable "sounds like" subjectivist reporting organs (even for the increasingly "objective" audiophile), MQA has shown that they can't even do that - they put the industry (and their relationship to it) first, second and third.  They don't even have a mechanism to understand what actual consumers hear, and how consumers evaluate and judge things overall!  The staff and writers imagine themselves to be just another audiophile, one who happens to write reviews.  However, MQA has revealed them to be so biased and skewed toward the industry (for whatever reasons, known and unknown) they are truly befuddled as to why we consumers can't hear what they hear.  There must be something wrong with us, or it's a political conspiracy of the forums, or it is even uncontained "hate", etc.  DRM, formats - why would real audiophiles be concerned with such things?

 

It is not that MQA will break this culture - it is too entrenched for any one thing to change it, but MQA has certainly stressed it and shifted it.  Consumers now understand just how homogenous the "industry insider" culture is, despite a few rebels like the late Charles Hanson.  We also now have no reason to even trust the trade publications "sounds like" evaluations as they can't even get these almost completely subjectivised affairs right...

In other words, MQA may be the beginning of the end for these trade rags, and all it took was a silly, lossy, DRM spiked fabricated entity like MQA to expose their true colors.

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

 

I’m sorry, but there’s how many high end audio magazines in print today — two? They don’t survive in this day and age by just shilling for whoever puts up full page ads. They survive because the ears that write for them have a degree of trustworthiness and experience that keeps people reading.

 

There is more than two, if you include HT magazines and European magazines (I do not know the Asian magazines, so no comment there). 

 

Trustworthiness? How many people can afford what they review? Most of the equipment is priced so high that I wonder how can their be trust when we don't own what they are hawking? Just making an observation.

 

I mean, Top Gear, even pans high priced cars. How can these magazines not do that?

[Spacehound]

19 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

In other words, MQA may be the beginning of the end for these trade rags, and all it took was a silly, lossy, DRM spiked fabricated entity like MQA to expose their true colors.

The paper ones are dying anyway.

Like buggy-whip manufacturers did  when the internal combustion engine was invented. It's great what a few  nerds playing with home-made computers can achieve given a not very long time. I was one of them.

And no sane person is going to pay for an online one when there are so many audio sites  to choose from.

 

Thus the vitriol from them  when people post their  honestly-held  opinions here and elsewhere. 

[botrytis]

I still read newspapers. It is like the vinyl mayvens, it is a tactile emotion thing. I still read and buy books also.

[crenca]

28 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

In other words, MQA may be the beginning of the end for these trade rags, and all it took was a silly, lossy, DRM spiked fabricated entity like MQA to expose their true colors.

 

Well, yes and no in my opinion.  It actually took the continuing shift of certain facts in the culture:   a changing demographic - the "jacket and tie" audiophile being (slowly) replaced by the more digitally aware and voodoo averse audiophile who seeks value (something Stereophile and TAS have just about given up on completely).  By being more and more "digitally aware", having grown up with the PC "revolution" and a consumer electronics market littered with the history of semi-magical digital promises that always underdeliver, MQA came in marketing itself as an old school and confidence game "trust us - we are the audio savants, the trusted publications, the real experts - you want this".  It might have worked not all that long ago.  If they had kept it in an actual physical hardware box, it might have worked especially if they had claimed an "analog" component to it.  

 

However, the "high end" will continue on before.  Go to an audio show like RMAF and ask yourself how much of this 5 and 6 figure equipment do they actually sell?  Not much, but at those prices you can sustain and increasingly narrow demographic.  What MQA has shown us is just how incestuous this culture is.  

 

With the rise of the consumer online review (think Amazon) and forums such as this one however, the trade publication industry no longer can control the narrative because there are other sources of information.  That said, most of the online trade publications (think Lee S, Darko, etc.) are no different than the print publications - they are so far down into the industry culture they missed the boat on MQA as well.

[GUTB]

Why are you guys literally inventing make-believe wrongs committed against you by MQA?

[realhifi]

49 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

In other words, MQA may be the beginning of the end for these trade rags, and all it took was a silly, lossy, DRM spiked fabricated entity like MQA to expose their true colors.

Lol!  Yeah, IF readership is down at some of the "rags" as you refer them, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the proliferation of home theater, "Lifestyle" audio products, iPhones, iPods, Bluetooth, etc, etc, etc....

[crenca]

12 minutes ago, realhifi said:

Lol!  Yeah, IF readership is down at some of the "rags" as you refer them, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the proliferation of home theater, "Lifestyle" audio products, iPhones, iPods, Bluetooth, etc, etc, etc....

 

Your right, High Fidelity does not capture the attention of many for exactly these reasons.  However his point was that MQA has revealed to current readership just where their loyalties reside - and it ain't with their readers...

[realhifi]

2 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Your right, High Fidelity does not capture the attention of many for exactly these reasons.  However his point was that MQA has revealed to current readership just where their loyalties reside - and it ain't with their readers...

So your contention is that their MQA coverage will be the straw that broke the camels back and that it will be the demise of print audio journalism?

[rickca]

2 minutes ago, realhifi said:

So your contention is that their MQA coverage will be the straw that broke the camels back and that it will be the demise of print audio journalism?

There will always be plenty of people who just believe what they are told and won't listen to someone whose name is unfamiliar.

[Ralf11]

32 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Why are you guys literally inventing make-believe wrongs committed against you by MQA?

 

 

because it SUX

[kumakuma]

36 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Why are you guys literally inventing make-believe wrongs committed against you by MQA?

 

Do you have an specific examples of anyone doing this?

 

[Spacehound]

42 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Why are you guys literally inventing make-believe wrongs committed against you by MQA?

Because there are many pages of solid evidence against it, here and elsewhere. Proof that it doesn't do what it claims, too.

 

If you chose to ignore that it's your business.

[Samuel T Cogley]

8 minutes ago, realhifi said:

So your contention is that their MQA coverage will be the straw that broke the camels back and that it will be the demise of print audio journalism?

 

@crenca has written extensively about how audiophilia is often a confidence game.  What I glean from his post you're replying to is that consumer reviews are showing a gap between what the professional pundits say they're hearing and what the consumers experience.  I'm not saying there's isn't sometimes inherent value in professional reviews.  But look at ML's rather visceral reactions to being questioned.  He's even gone so far as to say:

 

Quote

Chris allows abusive, offensive, and insulting language directed at people who do this for a living on his site - every day. To my mind, this is not the way a professional moderates a forum.

 

The stench of fear is unmistakable to me.  As if it would be less of an offense if people on CA were slagging Archimago (which no doubt ML would applaud).

 

So MQA could expose that gap between professional pundits' published reviews and what people are actually experiencing.  I think the distinction of "print" publications is largely irrelevant, as physical print consumption continues to decline across the board.  The point is that as crowd-sourcing of audiophile gear performance reporting improves in quality, the "need" for publications like Stereophile diminishes.  If Stereophile continues to ignore valid criticisms of MQA in favor of maintaining their status quo of industry friendliness, their perceived value among those that could constitute a new audience could be in serious jeopardy.  But I don't think they're in any danger of losing believers like you.

 

The global economy and consumerism in general has been in a state of upheaval for many years now.  MQA is a too little, too late attempt to make audiophilia relevant into future decades.  Because of the internet's ability to "democratize" information, many people now have access to hard technical data unfiltered by publications who value industry friendliness as their primary purpose.  That genie is already out of the bottle and there's much, much more happening here than some "armchair engineers" being "abusive, offensive, and insulting".  Will MQA accelerate the demise of the traditional professional audio gear review venue?  From my perspective, that will hinge on just how accommodating those venues are to dissenting views.  Will traditional consumers of their content be swayed by crowd-sourced data that casts doubt on their objectivity?  Probably not.  But they're banking on readers like you being loyal and summarily dismissing those rude, unwashed engineers.

[adamdea]

6 hours ago, GUTB said:

Look guys. You want to know why pro review publications like everything and hardly ever put out strongly negative opinions? It’s because YOU THE READERS don’t LIKE hearing negativity about a piece of gear you bought or a fan of.

 

3 hours ago, GUTB said:

 

I’m sorry, but there’s how many high end audio magazines in print today — two? They don’t survive in this day and age by just shilling for whoever puts up full page ads. They survive because the ears that write for them have a degree of trustworthiness and experience that keeps people reading.

So putting both points together, you’re saying they survive because the reviewers can be trusted to write positive reviews?

[realhifi]

1 hour ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

@crenca has written extensively about how audiophilia is often a confidence game.  What I glean from his post you're replying to is that consumer reviews are showing a gap between what the professional pundits say they're hearing and what the consumers experience.  I'm not saying there's isn't sometimes inherent value in professional reviews.  But look at ML's rather visceral reactions to being questioned.  He's even gone so far as to say:

 

 

The stench of fear is unmistakable to me.  As if it would be less of an offense if people on CA were slagging Archimago (which no doubt ML would applaud).

 

So MQA could expose that gap between professional pundits' published reviews and what people are actually experiencing.  I think the distinction of "print" publications is largely irrelevant, as physical print consumption continues to decline across the board.  The point is that as crowd-sourcing of audiophile gear performance reporting improves in quality, the "need" for publications like Stereophile diminishes.  If Stereophile continues to ignore valid criticisms of MQA in favor of maintaining their status quo of industry friendliness, their perceived value among those that could constitute a new audience could be in serious jeopardy.  But I don't think they're in any danger of losing believers like you.

 

The global economy and consumerism in general has been in a state of upheaval for many years now.  MQA is a too little, too late attempt to make audiophilia relevant into future decades.  Because of the internet's ability to "democratize" information, many people now have access to hard technical data unfiltered by publications who value industry friendliness as their primary purpose.  That genie is already out of the bottle and there's much, much more happening here than some "armchair engineers" being "abusive, offensive, and insulting".  Will MQA accelerate the demise of the traditional professional audio gear review venue?  From my perspective, that will hinge on just how accommodating those venues are to dissenting views.  Will traditional consumers of their content be swayed by crowd-sourced data that casts doubt on their objectivity?  Probably not.  But they're banking on readers like you being loyal and summarily dismissing those rude, unwashed engineers.

Not sure I qualify as a “believer”, whatever that is to you and also how you came to the conclusion that I would (and do) “summarily dismiss those rude unwashed engineers” as a loyal reader. 

 

More to the point though, who do you think I should listen to on this site if I’m looking at getting an opinion on some new speakers?  

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, realhifi said:

Not sure I qualify as a “believer”, whatever that is to you and also how you came to the conclusion that I would (and do) “summarily dismiss those rude unwashed engineers” as a loyal reader. 

 

More to the point though, who do you think I should listen to on this site if I’m looking at getting an opinion on some new speakers?  

 

The best answer I can offer is to seek out those with a demonstrated commitment to technical facts and objectivity and avoid those still heavily invested in the current professional audiophile pundit system.  And I understand if this suggestion is either humorous or disconcerting.  Like I said, I seriously doubt you're asking this because you desire to be open minded to the notion of consumer advocacy vs. industry friendliness.

 

 

[MetalNuts]

3 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

There is more than two, if you include HT magazines and European magazines (I do not know the Asian magazines, so no comment there). 

 

Trustworthiness? How many people can afford what they review? Most of the equipment is priced so high that I wonder how can their be trust when we don't own what they are hawking? Just making an observation.

 

I mean, Top Gear, even pans high priced cars. How can these magazines not do that?

There are a couple of HIFI magazines in my place but IMHO they are not trustworthy and they will praise those who pay. 

 

There was incidents of a CD gift to everyone attending the HiFi Show.  Most attendees found that the sound quality was not satisfactory though the reason could not be ascertained (some said of wrong phase in some of the tracks).  The write of one magazine that organized the event denied of the accusation and claimed that the CD sound excellent in his system of 2 million HK dollars. 

 

The CD gift was supposed to be listened by every attendee and enjoyed it without mutli million dollar worth equipment.  I took it that he was saying "you guys are not qualified to criticize unless you have equipment like me"

 

Shall we trust these guys?

[Brinkman Ship]

FYI, a poster of on Hoffman attempted to derail the thread when posted an absolutely insane tirade with personal attacks.

 

it was reported and quickly removed.

 

He apparently was put up to it by several posters here on CA.  Any ideas?