That’s just being intellectually dishonest. TAS is one of the two largest hifi publications in the US, and Tom is one of the key persons at TAS. If all he has to do is to use “IMO”, “what I have heard”, “in my system”, “in my room”, “with my gear” “with my music collection” “based on my preference” and the like phrase and shower their ad sponsors with positive reviews as a cop out, then there is no reason for him or any reviewer to say anything bad about anything because no 2 person will have 100% identical circumstances with respect to their audio. If you pay attention that’s how all the ad sponsored reviewers operate - glorified marketing person.
Take this to the extreme, hypothetically speaking even a deaf person can review audio gear and give positive endorsement because that person felt certain pleasing vibration in their body - “the best hifi I have experienced in my life”
Do you think he has access to every headphone amplifier, at all times? I don’t.
Do you think it’s intellectually honest to compare what you have in front of you to a memory from a year ago or more? I don’t.
Do you have proof of this “pay for positive reviews” culture you can share with us? Not personal opinions or things you suspect might have happened? Three examples should suffice.
Again, why would any magazine review something they don’t find, in some way or other, a “good product”? As mentioned earlier, they’re not a consumer affairs organisation and have no obligation to tell us what “sucks”.
How is making statements about how to get the best from a product or whom it might suit (neither of which requires a judgement of where it sits on the spectrum from “sucks to amazeballs”) a bad thing?
How is the absence of negative reviews at all proof of shills and dishonesty? How is a positive review proof of same?
If we want reviews to
appear totally impartial then we’d better start finding ways to get stuff into the hands of reviewers
and pay them a living wage to do so, and ban advertising.
The conspiracy theories live large, but like most, the ones in hifi are built on years of cynicism and hearsay.
For what it’s worth, I agreed with the review conclusions and comparisons to Susvara. If the review was lying for cash, what does that mean for anyone who happens to agree?