[ajsaxin]

i am new to head fi and high end headphones.so after my research and long searchs and hours reading on headphone amps and the reviews i noticed though meier amps are very popular among head fi members i do not see a single review on any of the major sites( stereophile,or sound stage or six moons ect)any reason why or is it just that meier amps do not interest them.

 

[ManAtWork]

I try to answer this, usually if a vendor wants to have someone writing a review for its specific product, the vendor (or through Sole Agent) needs to approach the reviewer directly and sent the product to him for reviewing in agreement. I believe Dr. Jan Meier is not interested to sent a sample to those medias for writing a review, but rather for personal selling (this he much prefers). So you can't see any review of Meier's products.

 

[badmonkey]

LOL

You are nowhere near cynical enough.

If said review appears in a magazine which accepts advertising, one should treat said review with extreme caution.

I suspect Mr. Meier is not a big spender on the advertiser client lists of the magazines.

I ran, and still work in, a business unrelated to audio but with a comparably specialist market. The magazines are COMPLETELY inattentive of the readers' interests - they are there to make money, end of story.

We would love to send product samples to them, for completely neutral testing and reviews, whereupon the magazines may write what they like - good or bad - we have enough faith in our product to assume good. But this will just not happen. We must first advertise, and then, they will write a positive review. Perhaps not glowing if they secretly weren't impressed, but never negative. That would probably kill us as an advertiser.

(Similarly, this works for our competitors. Some of those competitors make truly awful products that are not necessarily obvious to their consumers. But the magazine would NEVER publish a comparative review between our two products, lest they lose the competitor when he gets p*ssed at the double whammy of negative promotion for him and positive for us. Now I may be biased, but the problem to the consumer here should be obvious - the need to know "which is better" is genuinely important).

Magazines with very large readerships suffer less from this, as their sales figures form a larger component of their budget. But with smaller specialist markets, it is pervasive.

Take it from me, you'll be much better off with the reviews you will find from the amateurs on Head Fi. Just take care to qualify them against the reviewer's experience, which to the credit of the writer is usually disclosed.

Fortunately for Jan, he produces a product which will sell well (or not) based on word-of-mouth.

 

[zotjen]

Quote:

If said review appears in a magazine which accepts advertising, one should treat said review with extreme caution.

Consumer Reports does not accept advertising so that they can show they are unbiased when reviewing products. However, I doubt we'll see them do a review of headphone amps anytime soon. That said, I don't always agree with the reviews in CR either, ads or no ads.

 

[badmonkey]

Yep, that just suffers from another problem. Because it's not a specialist publication, the writers usually don't know sh!te about what they're reviewing.

I'd treat any CR article as a concise introduction only - and I'd guess you're past that point.

 

[ajsaxin]

i am talking about sites like stereophile and soundstage i ve seen a review on the cia vhp1 and an obscure chinese amp called original master .there are not even main stream head phone ampbrands.is it because sometimes if its am exceptional product that they do a review on these unknown brands or is it because maybe the review knows the maker?

 

[dr.morton]

Quote:

i am talking about sites like stereophile and soundstage i ve seen a review on the cia vhp1 and an obscure chinese amp called original master .

What difference would any reviews by these sites make? None at all.
Here you find people who have paid for their product and tell others what the liked and what the disliked. If you take your time any read the many comments here you will get a better picture of the products then any single review can produce. Trust me.

 

[Henry Flower]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dr.morton /img/forum/go_quote.gif What difference would any reviews by these sites make? None at all. Here you find people who have paid for their product and tell others what the liked and what the disliked. If you take your time any read the many comments here you will get a better picture of the products then any single review can produce. Trust me.

Actually what you tend to get here is people trying to justify to themselves spending so much money on their new toy. The really interesting reviews, where people write at length about the negatives of products they've bought, are few and far between. That's why a comprehensive review of items loaned for the purpose can have value.

 

[gdeth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Henry Flower /img/forum/go_quote.gif Actually what you tend to get here is people trying to justify to themselves spending so much money on their new toy. The really interesting reviews, where people write at length about the negatives of products they've bought, are few and far between. That's why a comprehensive review of items loaned for the purpose can have value.

i agree with that. there are so many self serving comments and "reviews" on this board, that it is difficult to take anyone really seriously.

my advice is, go ahead and read the reviews from magazines, forums, etc, but don't take them too seriously. trust your own ears the most. and remember, it's about the music, not the holy grail of equipment.

as for magazine reviews, yes, they are rare but, imo, mostly because in the hifi audio/video world, it is a niche segment.

 

[globiboulga]

It's back to the comment I made about hi-fi magazines reviews in the Skylab test thread (which is a good exemple of a good review by the way, even though we only have Skylab's point of view), you end having two kinds of 'official' reviews:
- A very good product
- A screw**g fantastic product.

What is the difference between the 2? Usually price. Let's review a CD player at $400 and a CD player at $2000... Guess which is the best...

A couple of useless graphs and there you are...

While I do agree with the self-serving purpose of some of the reviews on forums, they are still the best around, they are usually more thorough than the ones on magazines and websites and can sometime be critic. You can always read hints of disappointement/regrets in some reviews, which give you a good indication of some downsides of the products. More importantly, because people buy their products, you get ranking on value, rather than on pure performance...

Two exemples for you (and back to Skylab thread). When he says the Move and the Larocco are on par, and brilliant, I know I want to buy one or the other. When I see the price, I go for the move because of the value (and Skylab's points it out)... Now, yes I rely on someone subjective point of view, but that's still better than a magazine review that does just say: brilliant product and does not give any form of context (I could see them bagging the move for the casing though, idiots)... Now, it'd obvioulsy be better if we had two or three of these threads to balance that opinion out, but I want to thank Skylab here for his work and patience... And the sponsors of the forum to be open to such reviews as well.

Second exemple is back when I was looking for an mp3 player. I was about to go for an ipod as always but was put off by the itunes thingy (I hate to be told, that's me and I am too dumb for anything else than drag and drop - plus I am old school, I lake folders. I am more organised than tags - I hate tags)... If it was not for the net and reviews around (dapreview.net this time), I would never have heard of Cowon or Rio, and lived in peaceful ignorance (and, as it happens here, my wallet would be fater). Yes people tend to justify their buys (most important phase in marketing if you ask me, the reinforcement bit - you've made the right choice), but they also give you REAL arguments with it, which magazine tend not to do - and let me tell you magazine guys usually are less knowledgeable than passionates in the public (I reckon most of them have passed their used by date)... Bottom line, I ended up getting the X5, because people were pissed off by CNet reviews on it and spent countless threads and notes argumenting why it should be ahead of the iPod (and it should be).

You might end up having a Meier reviewed in a magazine some day (in Europe probably), but I would not expect a good review (thorough, critic, honest)... The only reason why I buy Hi-Fi magazine at the moment is to get a list or resellers so I can merry-go-round and get prices down. And when I glance at speaker reviews, it gets me sick: I can't recall having read a bad review in years, and while they rant about the technology, the inside, the color of the casing, the output NUMBERS, barely nothing about the actual SOUND... But then they always tell you: you have to go an listen for yourself... Yeah, that's exactly why these people should not be allowed to review products: they refuse to give an opinion...

Incidently I am looking for a new pair of speakers (well two actually, one for the study and one for the main room) and my father used to have really good Cabasse ones. Well, I can't recall having these reviewed anywhere lately... A bit like Meier Audio, great products but no honest reviews to be seen anywhere.

I guess in our modern age it's not cool to be critical of anything. You end up being an evil doer from the axis of evil

Ah! Capitalism and Freedom...

 

[Skylab]

I think the point made above that Jan would need to push on a magazine like Stereophile in order to get his stuff reviewed there is correct. But he does not need to advertise. Ray Samuels has had multiple products reviewed in Stereophile, and he certainly hasn't advertised there. Ray does pursue reviews, however.

FWIW, Jan Meier was kind enough to agree to loan me a Cantate and an Arietta that I am going to use to do a comparative review with the Aria and the 0pera, so folks on head-fi can get an idea how the various amps in the Meier lineup compare to each other.

 

[lerio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skylab /img/forum/go_quote.gif FWIW, Jan Meier was kind enough to agree to loan me a Cantate and an Arietta that I am going to use to do a comparative review with the Aria and the 0pera, so folks on head-fi can get an idea how the various amps in the Meier lineup compare to each other.

Wowww

 

[pedxing]

This board also had its fair share of skepticism about Jan Meier's products and his company. It goes both ways, but from what gather over the years, he has supplied (or should we say supported) the headphone hobby with interesting solutions when there wasn't much of option besides DIY kits (oh wait, he supplied DIY kits back then). Way way way back, Meier audio had some of its products reviewed by audiophile sites and smaller magazines.

If you worried about fan-boy-ism versus unbiased reviews, you will just have to use common sense.

 

[badmonkey]

globiboulga is spot on right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajsaxin /img/forum/go_quote.gif i am talking about sites like stereophile and soundstage i ve seen a review on the cia vhp1 and an obscure chinese amp called original master .there are not even main stream head phone ampbrands.is it because sometimes if its am exceptional product that they do a review on these unknown brands or is it because maybe the review knows the maker?

Well I can't comment on Sound Stage, don't know it well enough, but I did read that review on the Master and I have to admit it was a positive influence on my decision to buy one. The reviewer compared it to the X-Can V3 and mentions Creek and HeadRoom although I suspect without experience. Anyway, while it was useful, it was by no means comprehensive to me and served only as one datapoint of many.

Skylab when do you expect to be doing that review?

 

[Sovkiller]

Some food for thought about audiophile reviews and magazines, I found this article some time ago in the Audio Critic magazine, and it resumes more or less my points of view, a review should have at least some technical evidence and technical info, at least, of the product reviewed, otherwise is IMO real funny, and completelly subjective...