Magazine Reading with Jaded Eyes

Leafed through the HiFi+ at Barnes & Noble last night. I thought later about how my trade magazine reading has reached a different stage… yet again.

Many years ago… many, many years ago… I read them to find out what things sounded like. You know, how the last paragraph or two has all the meat and I would just read that, and then maybe scan the rest of the article if I was bored. I only read the equipment reviews – the music reviews never made sense to me (how are they supposed to know what kind of music I like?) although some background on the artists can be interesting – at least in pre-Google, pre-Wikipedia days.

Then I would just read the reviews of the ultra high-end equipment.

Then I would just read the reviews of the ultra high-end. written by the reviewers who frequently reviewed [aka knew something, anything about] the high-end.

Then I would read these particular reviews of the ultra high-end to see how much they agreed with what I had heard

Then I would read these particular reviews of the ultra high-end to see if and how subtly they pointed out the flaws in the piece of equipment

Then I would read these particular reviews of the ultra high-end to see if they had any clue about what was the important things that the piece of equipment did right and the important things that it did wrong.

Then I pretty much stopped reading reviews

Now, when I see a review, I think “cool, somebody is getting some positive press”. I mean, you know it is going to be positive, right? No reason to read the review. When I saw that the Edge G6 amp got reviewed in HiFi+, I thought “Good for Steven and the Edge factory, they got some positive press”. When I see the new Evolution Acoustics monitor speakers highlighted on the first page of the HiFi+ CES Show Report, I think “Good for Jonathan Tinn”. No reason to read the actual comments or reviews – they really do not matter. It is not like they are going to try and accurately place the sound of the piece under review in the context of its peers, the available associated amp [if speaker] and speaker [if amp] and with respect to the other components in its product line.

I am not sure what the next step is in my consumption of trade magazines.

But it probably ain’t gonna be pretty 🙂