# Music / gear reviews - who do you trust?



## noiseboyuk (Jan 3, 2011)

I use Sonar, and so I was interested in the new X1 DAW. Shiny, new GUI, looks lovely. Pretty quickly I realised though that there were no badly-needed improvements to video working, so I decided to hold fire til the early reports were in.

The first reviews - notably from Computer Music - praised it to the skies, 9/10, badly needed upgrade etc etc. However, from day 1 the user reports have been diabolical. Very buggy. Now there's nothing too unexpected there, although it's a little disappointing - a brand new product on Day 1, you're likely to get glitches. But the obvious conclusion is that the CM review isn't worth the glossy paper it's printed on.

Perhaps it's no surprise that Computer Music's review has all the hallmarks of an editorially compromised puff piece - I'm expecting a lot of cynical rolled eyebrows here. So... who do we trust? Sound On Sound seems pretty good still, but I have to say I've yet to find anything that is as reliable as the collective wisdom to be found here, for example....


----------



## Hannes_F (Jan 3, 2011)

Guy, the purpose of journals, tests, reports, reviews and forums is to press stuff into the market. Sometimes even deservedly, nevertheless something to always be aware of.


----------



## JohnG (Jan 3, 2011)

Hannes is right, of course, but I do find Sound on Sound to be quite good. In addition, Nick Batzdorf's in-depth reviews give a better idea of what it's really like to use a product than most other reviews out there.


----------



## Stephen Baysted (Jan 3, 2011)

Agree with John, SOS is generally spot on for reviews, particularly the more expensive stuff.


----------



## stonzthro (Jan 3, 2011)

Is nick still doing reviews? If so, where - I've always really liked what he has had to say about equipment.


----------



## SergeD (Jan 3, 2011)

I read that kind of reviews to know only what it is about or what's new in some product. For the appreciation side of a product forums and users reviews give the non biased evaluation. for Sonar X1 the Cakewalk and GearSlutz forums cover the matter on every side.

SergeD


----------



## midphase (Jan 3, 2011)

Yeah....hate to say it but I trust magazine reviews as much as I trust those movie critics quotes in the trailers.

There is much fuzz around the forums about how negative posts can impact sales...and they do. But the truth of the matter is that I pay much closer attention to what is being said in forums like these and Gearslutz than I do in print. Ultimately it's difficult for journalists to put a product trough the real world ringer in all sorts of ways, but fairly easy for a bunch of different users.

Really and truly, the only negative is who jumps in the water first?

So next time somebody purchases the latest and greatest ahead of the rest...don't be jealous, rather let him be the first reviewer and be glad that someone else is willing to take the bullet if the product isn't as hot as the magazines said it was!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Jan 3, 2011)

We're coming out with an issue for NAMM.


----------



## midphase (Jan 3, 2011)

Nick...I think it'd be cool if you could be talked into doing a weekly video podcast! Now that would be really cool!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Jan 3, 2011)

It doesn't work that way with all magazines, gsilbers. That's always been the perception, but it's only true of some of them.

Kays, we're moving in the video direction.


----------



## Hannes_F (Jan 3, 2011)

gsilbers @ Mon Jan 03 said:


> but magazines are in such a bad shape finiancially that i dont blame them.. they need more revenue and selling out to stay a float. or convert striaght to online only.



Yes but what sense does it make then any more except of being an industry megaphone?

BTW I have been in that situation ... did really independend online tests myself of certain technical products but then the story began. From there I went to be an alpha tester, from there to co-developer, to support provider and marketeer of these sort of products, and all the time I only wanted to bring the technology forward ... while trying to maintain my independence and integrity as hard as I could. 

Paid my price because when I spoke up too loud about certain misconceptions my contracts got canceled from one day to the other and I was out of that business. 

If you are a specialized journalist you are being pampered by the industry that provides you at least free samples of their products, send you christmas gifts and make sure you know their family. Then suddenly you feel between the lines because you want to do them all good and your magazine or website or whatever lives from their money. That is why I say that in the moment there are funds and interests involved it is very hard to speak the truth.


----------



## NYC Composer (Jan 3, 2011)

Hannes_F @ Mon Jan 03 said:


> gsilbers @ Mon Jan 03 said:
> 
> 
> > but magazines are in such a bad shape finiancially that i dont blame them.. they need more revenue and selling out to stay a float. or convert striaght to online only.
> ...



Whereas I'm sure that all of that is true, I'm also +1 on the general veracity of Sound on Sound, so I guess there are varying levels of pandering to the industry.

You also make a good case for an independent review site supported by advertising but maybe not musical instruments/software advertising. It might fly if it got a high rating for integrity.

At the end of the day, however, one man's prized Jaguar is another man's maintenance headache. I think in the final analysis, the only way to pre-judge a purchase is hands-on. TrySound seems like a wave of the future. Time limited or crippled demo versions as well. 

Once upon a time I could go to a music store and try things out. That's harder now. For many years I went to NAMM and talked my way into getting some hands-on time. It was almost always worth the trip.

edit-btw, Nick, where's that Ivory II review?


----------



## gsilbers (Jan 3, 2011)

Hannes_F @ Mon Jan 03 said:


> gsilbers @ Mon Jan 03 said:
> 
> 
> > but magazines are in such a bad shape finiancially that i dont blame them.. they need more revenue and selling out to stay a float. or convert striaght to online only.
> ...



they get paid 


but i agree...

thats why i go so much to gearslutz and here. but then again, there are a lot of backgrounds and opinions and some may see a product as great others not. 
i for example dont like east west at all. even hollywood string i found just to be ok. 
i dont like their marketing practices, their sample products etc. but i know many adore them and swear by them. thankfully i got the terapack and could check it myself. so if i relied on reviews and forums id be down $1000 on samples that
other companies do better. 
and thats the problem by not having music stores that have ways to test every product or take a product with you to check. specially software samples. 
so we have to rely on reviews and forums and maybe cut down demos. 
which sucks but it is what it is. and many rely on those reviews.
so companies with bigger marketing muscle will get more customers cause they can put cool ads on mags.. give away products to the magazine editors etc. 

still i find new products in computer magazine and futuremusic that i wont see anywhere else. so in a sense i pay for those magazines to be a big ad instead of unbiased opinion, whihc i turn to tape op or sos for that. 

and i also think ita just evolution of capitalism supply and demand.. 
if consumers where more into getting unbiased opinions they would be paying for it and create a demand for more magazines like SOS and tape op. 
but they rather not pay the yearly fee and just check out forums and blog's websites. made by random folks who may or not have the experience.


----------



## Hannes_F (Jan 3, 2011)

NYC Composer @ Mon Jan 03 said:


> You also make a good case for an independent review site



An independent review site like I had worked very well in several regards because I was brutally honest and since it was about technical issues it was easier to give grades, percenteages and the like. The astonishing discovery was that as soon as products were transparent clients were inclined to pay more money for more performance. Which obviously was likened by the high quality providers but not by the others. Bigger parts of any industry are living from a dust of client expectations that are not explicitly contradicted. 

The problem is in order to make independent reviews a business model you either need clients to pay for the information directly by a club system of any sort (website only accesseable for members, magazine and the like) which does not work very well since it is so easy for anybody to spread a result chart in the internet that did cost you weeks of labour. The other model is to participate from the product money stream by being a consultant, distributor, dealer, advertisement provider or the like. With the mentioned difficulties.


----------



## NYC Composer (Jan 3, 2011)

I like Nick's reviews as well.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Jan 3, 2011)

Thanks dudes.

SOS is a very good magazine, no question, and Paul White is excellent (when I first started at Recording magazine in 1991 - then Home & Studio Recording - he was my UK counterpart). As far as I can see, the main reason they're doing better than the ones in this country is that in Europe people buy magazines on the newsstand. In this country the distribution exists only to provide an audience to advertisers, and you make no money from newsstand sales.


----------



## wst3 (Jan 4, 2011)

I don't think much of any conventionally published review - and it is not the fault of the manufacturers, the writers, the editors, or the publishers - it's just the state of affairs that we the readers, along with everyone else, have allowed to develop.

I wrote reviews for a couple of magazines back in the 1980s. If you really dig you can find them, but since I might say something less than positive I'm going to leave all names out.

There was a time, when new products were coming out really regularly, that the press was somehow able to keep up. And that was the key! No one wrote a review of a product they had not spent sufficient time with. It was obvious, I suppose, to the editors when you tried to 'phone one in', and they'd send you back to do it again.

There were also certain practices that were generally accepted, not the least of which was to provide a frame of reference. That's a lot harder than you think.

I wrote one review on a product that I had owned for nearly a year. How it escaped a review when it was released I do not know. That was the easiest review I ever wrote, and it ended up being expanded to more of a how-to than a review.

I tried to write one review about three months after I received a prototype. The review was not entirely favorable. The manufacturer was upset because they had in fact addressed a number of shortcomings that I 'picked on'. They sent a second unit, not a prototype, and they were right, they had resolved most of my complaints.

There was a breakdown somewhere. I had been providing feedback regularly, and it turned out they had been paying attention, but they never thought to let the editors, or me, know. This caused a delay in getting the review into print, and they were still unhappy.

That's the background<G>... these days I look for two things in a review:
1) evidence that the reviewer is in fact very familiar with the product. It is usually obvious - they either know the ins and outs or they are quoting marketing materials. And I do not place blame here - sometimes it really is more important to get any word out that a product exists than anything else. I think it is short sighted, but alas, it is the norm - especially since forums are huge competition since they can be instantaneous.
2) a point of reference! If a reviewer likes the way a microphone picks up an acoustic guitar, well, that tells me nothing useful. If the reviewer compares a recording of a specific guitar made with a specific microphone to a recording made with the review microphone now I'm learning something. 

"The brand-X microphone sounds startlingly like a KM-84 placed 12 inches from the model-y guitar"

That's a microphone I am going to audition!!! (In fact I am still looking for it<G>)!!

TapeOp gets close with a lot of their reviews. It is clear that the reviewers have lived with the gear for a while (in most cases.) And very often they will compare the new product to gear I am familiar with. So I trust those reviews. Sometimes the comparison is made to something I know nothing about... I still trust the review, I just can't use it, since I still don't have a frame of reference.

Mostly they are reviewing hardware, software is a different ball of wax, and much more difficult. There was a magazine called VI (any relation, never thought to ask) that was published for a while. The majority of the reviews were really well done - they provided details about how the tool could be used as well as a blow-by-blow description of features. And they almost always provided reference points. 

I have found the mini-reviews posted here from time to time to be pretty helpful. Members will explain how they used a tool, and often provide audio examples. For software tools that's a hard to beat combination. Instant frame of reference!!

If I am interested in the audio quality I won't use files that are compressed with lossy filters as a reference, so that's still an area where we might have some room to grow.

As an example, there are only a few uncompressed examples of LASS, which is what I want to hear for a quality evaluation (and quality is really the wrong word here, not talking good vs. bad, talking the character of the recordings... yeah, that's better.)

BUT, the MP3 examples of the divisi scripts or the ART script are more than useful all by themselves.

So there you go - I trust reviews that provide facts, proof of familiarity, and a frame of reference. I don't care if it is a web site, a print magazine, or a forum/listserver/newsgroup.


----------



## Andrew Aversa (Jan 4, 2011)

If only there were something like Consumer Reports for music equipment. The CR business model is generally subscription-only; they show general ratings for free, but if you want to read more in-depth, you have to pay. They don't accept any advertising at all and buy everything out of pocket, so they're not getting free stuff from manufacturers. They also extensively poll their subscriber base for metrics and feedback on various products.


----------



## gsilbers (Jan 4, 2011)

zircon_st @ Tue Jan 04 said:


> If only there were something like Consumer Reports for music equipment. The CR business model is generally subscription-only; they show general ratings for free, but if you want to read more in-depth, you have to pay. They don't accept any advertising at all and buy everything out of pocket, so they're not getting free stuff from manufacturers. They also extensively poll their subscriber base for metrics and feedback on various products.


\
thats a fukin great idea!!


----------



## a.leung (Jan 4, 2011)

zircon_st @ Tue Jan 04 said:


> If only there were something like Consumer Reports for music equipment. The CR business model is generally subscription-only; they show general ratings for free, but if you want to read more in-depth, you have to pay. They don't accept any advertising at all and buy everything out of pocket, so they're not getting free stuff from manufacturers. They also extensively poll their subscriber base for metrics and feedback on various products.



I dont know - maybe for hardware not software. Too many variables, too many folks who blame the manufacturer when a lot of its there own ignorance. So much 'noise' out there.

Personally I dont trust any review aside from hands on experience of my own. Although I will say S.O.S. magazine HAS put me in the right direction on several purchases.


----------



## Andrew Aversa (Jan 4, 2011)

Yeah, I agree that software is definitely tricky. But still, if there were a 'test lab' so to speak, that would be nice. eg. An older Core2Duo or Core2Quad with 4gb RAM, a newer Core i7 with 8-12gb, a dual/quad Mac G5, a 2009 Mac Pro, etc. This way if the reviewer finds an issue with plugin X he can try it on additional machines.

I would just question whether or not there's a big enough market. For things like vacuum cleaners, cars, TVs and computers, the market is hundreds of millions, so CR has a large base. But the expense of setting up proper testing and actually purchasing products for music gear specifically seems tricky.

Nonetheless, if someone did that, I'd pay for it


----------



## Dave Connor (Jan 4, 2011)

Nick's reviews are spot on because he's one of us - so all those things you want to know get covered.


----------

