viren bakhshi
Well-Known Member
This is Joe Roberts at his best:
"By the late 80s, I was out of grad school and virtually unemployable with a couple anthro degrees, so I got a job in a high end store. There I got to play with much of the gear under review and I could judge the reviewing on that basis, in addition to critiquing their evaluation systems on intellectual grounds.
"My general impression was that these guys were nuts. They were totally lost in their own language and losing track of the scheme. The cleverness of the review seemed to overtake the job of evaluating the gear. Tediously described micro analyses of a single violin note on some dreadful Editor's Choice Shaded Dog stretched on for paragraphs of wine and Leica references. In the end, one had little idea of what the device under test actually sounded like and I found it very difficult to recognize the review in the actual equipment.
"Although many of these 80s writers were intelligent and capable folks, some went down the rabbit hole of language and metaphor and got lost in the tunnels.
"I have done some reviewing and I think it is a difficult enterprise, especially if avoiding intensive navel-gazing and creating a useful, meaningful piece with general readability, entertainment value, and larger relevance are the goals. Many of the "top" reviewers have been formulaic as hell, almost to the point where one could cut and paste in new equipment names and fax it in the to the editor for the next issue. Reviewing machines."
Viren
"By the late 80s, I was out of grad school and virtually unemployable with a couple anthro degrees, so I got a job in a high end store. There I got to play with much of the gear under review and I could judge the reviewing on that basis, in addition to critiquing their evaluation systems on intellectual grounds.
"My general impression was that these guys were nuts. They were totally lost in their own language and losing track of the scheme. The cleverness of the review seemed to overtake the job of evaluating the gear. Tediously described micro analyses of a single violin note on some dreadful Editor's Choice Shaded Dog stretched on for paragraphs of wine and Leica references. In the end, one had little idea of what the device under test actually sounded like and I found it very difficult to recognize the review in the actual equipment.
"Although many of these 80s writers were intelligent and capable folks, some went down the rabbit hole of language and metaphor and got lost in the tunnels.
"I have done some reviewing and I think it is a difficult enterprise, especially if avoiding intensive navel-gazing and creating a useful, meaningful piece with general readability, entertainment value, and larger relevance are the goals. Many of the "top" reviewers have been formulaic as hell, almost to the point where one could cut and paste in new equipment names and fax it in the to the editor for the next issue. Reviewing machines."
Viren
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