saidentary
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2006
- Posts
- 594
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- 566
Like Dr. Jazz, I was able to receive a discount for writing a review as a beta tester. There was no instruction to write a positive review, that I recall. I DID tell them I really liked the headphones prior to being selected as a beta tester, but they never gave me any instruction whatsoever about what the tone of my review should be. You can go back and read the beta tester reviews and they are NOT all glowingly positive. Even my own review brings up some (significant but not dealbreaker) weaknesses which I felt were largely mitigated with a different amplifier.
As for the Amazon thing posted on Reddit, it seems unlikely they'd be stupid enough to put such an offer in writing, even if they were stupid enough to make such a dubious offer in the first place. But I don't know whether the Reddit post is genuine or not. In any event, voicing skepticism is NOT equivalent to defending the company; it's also not the same thing as being in love with companies. It just means that people are wise enough to question the authenticity of a disparaging item posted on the internet.
And anyway, at the end of the day, at least for audiophile things, the only thing a review would tell me is whether or not a product is likely to be worthy of a personal audition. Otherwise, they are almost useless. There is only one person on this planet who could get me to buy a product without listening to it first, because his opinion (on audiophile things) has correlated nearly perfectly with mine over the years.
A major reason for my skepticism about audio reviews in general, even honest ones, is that I've have personal experience where my perceptions were STRIKINGLY different from what I had expected based on what I had read prior to listening for myself. What does it matter what someone else thinks about a product if my own listening to that same product tells me something totally different? I will trust my own ears.
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