System Matching - Why No Assistance In Reviews?

Crocodile

New member
Jan 15, 2009
38
0
0
Visit site
Reviews often make reference to "careful matching/partnering" of equipment but very rarely mention actual examples. Why is there no reference points or suggestions of what should be partnered with what?

Would it be possible to group equipment by it's characteristics so that us mere mortals have more of a fighting chance of making suitable matches? I'm thinking something along the lines of say assigning a group value between -2 & +2, where 0 is completely neutral, positive values are towards bright/forward & negative values towards smooth/warm. So someone wanting a neutral system should aim for a net total of 0. Class 0 amp & class 0 speakers or -1 amp plus +1 speakers etc.

Obviously this would be somewhat subjective but then reviews are that anyway.

Thoughts?
 
Nice idea but not sure you could actually get it to work in principle.
As you said reviews are indeed very subjective and often only one persons opinion (except for some blind listening tests).
These reviews are often conducted with a fixed - and known - set of ancillary equipment that makes up the system.
To actually review just one piece of equipment is difficult enough to the throw in other variables and say whether they make that particular piece of equipment sound better or worse within a given system is obviously even more subjective.
The actual listening room itself would add a great deal of influence into the equation to a point where the review becomes meaningless when transfering the system as a whole to, lets say, your bedroom.
I tend to deal with reviews as very rough indicators as to whether the piece of equipment has what I am looking for in the way of inputs etc and rather push the reviewers opinions as to sound quality to the 'less important' area of the review as a whole.
Sound quality is a very subjective area (one mans warm is anothers neutral!).
The only way to audition is to listen to the particular piece of equipment within your own system and in your own room, accepted that this is often very difficult / impossible to do in this day and age.
 

matthewpiano

Well-known member
Reviews in the magazine often suggest suitable partnering equipment, but I'm not sure your idea would be all that helpful. There will always be two large elements missing from any review - how your own ears respond to a particular component or system, and (of massive importance in my view) the relationship between the system and the room in which it is listened to. A 'neutral' sounding system can easily be made to sound bright in a room with lots of reflective surfaces, or bass heavy in a room with lots of resonances.
 

dannycanham

New member
May 5, 2009
20
0
0
Visit site
The line is a purely theoretical one and doesn't exist like a ruler.

A bit like political parties. You get ones that have some attributes that gives them a left tag and others with a right tag. The actual attributes they do possess are a complex bag and are not necessarily inline with other left wing and right wing parties.

It is more of a conventient wording system than an a balancing equation.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I like the reviewing style where someone goes into extreme hyperbole about one part of the system.

For instance 'This mains cable has a lucid flowing musicality with a chocolatey bass and a creamy midrange.'

Who knows which bit they are actually describing? Certainly not the reviewer - they can only hear the whole system which is a sum of its parts. They could well be describing a dessert at the Ritz.
 

Andrew Everard

New member
May 30, 2007
1,878
2
0
Visit site
Globs said:
I like the reviewing style where someone goes into extreme hyperbole about one part of the system.

For instance 'This mains cable has a lucid flowing musicality with a chocolatey bass and a creamy midrange.'

Who knows which bit they are actually describing? Certainly not the reviewer - they can only hear the whole system which is a sum of its parts. They could well be describing a dessert at the Ritz.

Glad you like the reviewing style: the point of having a known reference system is that it makes it easy to assess the effect of changing one component of that system.

To answer the OP's point, when we suggest care is needed in partenring we usually give a description of the charcateristiscs requring that care, so it should be relatively easy to avoid the use of a bright-sounding amp or player with a speaker with similarly forward characteristics, for example.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I understand the points made as to why it is not possible but I for one would find it extremely helpful if at least suggestions were made as to what the reviewer thought might work as a combination just to give us a starting point: "...one might imagine that a **** would be a good **** for this ****".

As somone who has been out of the hifi buying loop for sometime and now looking to put a modest system together (maybe up to 10K) I for one am really stuggling. For example, maybe this isn't the correct approach, but I'm focusing on speakers. I read reviews that sound exciting and finish with the caveat "...with the right amp" or "...need careful partnering". Would it be too much to ask that those sentences might be finished with a "such as...."

Maybe it's bacause I am relatively ignorant and not particularly aware of what is on the market these days but statements about me choosing the right amp for a set of speakers alone is of little value (I would imagine that choosing the right partner for anything is a given anyway), at least a suggestion would give us a starting point.

Given that any system is the sum of its parts I would have thought that details of what type of system any particular product being reviewed would fit into should be a part of any review.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Talkingdrum said:
now looking to put a modest system together (maybe up to 10K)

Crikey - that's not a modest system, that would buy you McIntosh level stuff!!

IME I read 'needs careful partnering' as 'deeply flawed response but may match something with the opposite flaw'. As you mention speakers;- all the decent speakers I have heard have frankly worked with everything pretty well, the ones that didn't were too bright and frankly the tweeters were rubbish.

Which your huge (car sized) budget I'd consider very carefully going to a hi-fi show. Bristol and Heathrow seem the popular spots so you may have to travel, but it's worth it. Brush past the irrelevant booths and you'll soon find a wealth of different systems to listen to. It's truly eye opening how great some stuff is, and how rubbish some other stuff is.

Price doesn't seem to be a factor in deciding - it always puzzles me when reviewers band stuff in 'the sub £1000 category' etc, which almost implies the more you pay the better the sound gets!. For instance the worst amps I heard at the last show I got to cost £19k per monoblock. Quite a well known make so I'm not going to say who it was, but ignore the review and use your ears.

Also at shows you get makes and models you'd never see ordinarily and discounts for show stuff are work doing, I've saved hundreds and got some cracking stuff. And I know it's cracking as myself and a relative listened to a whole bunch of stuff to compare, and it was simply better than anything else we heard, although there were some coming close.

Also do the simplest test in the world: Play something you like (take CDs!) and turn the volume up, then don't listen to the music, listen to your ears: do they like it? Or are they telling you to turn down the noise? A truly good system will turn up and up and your ears wil still like it.
 
Maybe s/he meant 10KHz top end response, modest for an FM tuner! :D

But assuming we mean 10,000GBP, then why spend that sum if you don't have a fair idea what you are seeking?

I aspired to something from the Absolute Sounds stable since I first heard Audio Research and Sonus faber. One day, I was able to stretch to the core system outlined below, bearing in mind they were then Krell and SF budget lines! Someone else would have wanted, say, Naim or Arcam gear with B&W or KEFs.

It's a bit like houses - you know you've found one you want to live in. And with hi-fi, you know the sound you want when you hear it.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Thanks Globs, that's really good advice. I'm going to do a search and see if I can find any shows in the near future.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
"10K modest? Looking for bragging rights?". Having just rejoined the market after not purchasing any hifi for a long time the dealers I have been to see so far would have me believe that 10k buys me a very modest system indeed. "What sir needs is this Naim amp £2.5k + which would subsatntially benefit from this power supply upgrade £5k + and now streamer for 3k+........ would sir like some speakers to go with that?"

My initial budget was going to be 5k and imagined I would get a really decent system for that but have been made to feel I'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel with those kinds of funds (a slight exageration, but certainly would only get me on the very bottom rung of the ladder as far as anything "hifi").

It may well be that after looking around quite a bit more then I will find I can get a very decent system for much less.......I do like the B&W PM1s though :)
 

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts