I'm calling out the Reviewers! Thats right! In this video we are calling out Vinyl Attack, Audioholics and Andrew Robinson! Check us out at gr-research.com/
Look forward to the outcome. Please do not feel oblige to agreeing with Danny's claims, a fair review will be very much appreciated. Thanks for the effort and trouble.
Danny; Appreciate the call out. BTW, my last name is DellaSala not DellaRosa 😉 I also live in Florida, not Georgia. You make many valid points but some not so valid ones I hope to give you constructive feedback on without causing any hurt feelings. First, I respect what you do as a loudspeaker engineer. I think you’ve made some fine sounding products from what I’ve personally heard in the past and you’ve been a recipient of a few awards on our website I believe. I completely disagree with your take on cables but that’s OK. We can respectively disagree with each other and still be friends. You seem very likeable and down to earth and I am very flattered that you offered me to stay at your place. I’m dying to try your ribs and hang with you and Ron. I really enjoy Ron’s work as well. His videography is superb, has a great sense of humor and I appreciate his subjective listening reporting he does on products as well as his objective measurements. Class act right there. I find it a bit troubling that you seem to give CZcamsrs a free pass that magazine reviewers don’t get. First off, I can’t speak for other magazines, only for how I’ve run Audioholics for the past 22+ years. Our reviewers are completely detached from the marketing/advertising side of our publication. I oay them the same for a good or bad review. In fact, I’ve had companies drop advertising bc of an unfavorable review we’ve given them. I always side with our editorial staff unless they’ve made factual errors or misrepresentations of products. That has happened on occasion and we’ve corrected for that. Everyone makes mistakes, myself included, but at the end of the day, we all try to learn from them and move the needle forward. You claim CZcamsr’s are less corruptible bc they earn revenues based on views. I can tell you that NOBODY is making a living strictly on views unless their channel has 100 million subscribers like Pewdiepie. That just doesn’t exist in our small niche. Reality is a video that gets 50-100k views maybe earns $500. Hardly something anyone can live on. I do like the fact you noticed some CZcamsrs are selling the gear they review. I don’t think that’s an issue as long as it’s disclosed. I know Zreviews does that and has built a very successful business model around it. He isn’t hurting for subscribers and he’s got a huge loyal following. I don’t judge. Personally I don’t want to deal with the logistics of selling and shipping gear but some people don’t mind it. You fail to mention many YT producers lately are doing “sponsored” videos. I’ve heard from several manufacturers of a very popular YT channel won’t even review gear unless there is an affiliate program in place for them to earn commissions. Some claim their views are unchanged despite the company is PAYING them to review their product on their channel. The whole concept of a company PAYING for reviews doesn’t sit well with me at all. I never structure an advertising deal around reviews. I make that clear up front that reviews are kept separate from ad spends. By nature if you’re an advertiser, you will likely be bumped up on the priority list to get your products reviewed. We still review product from companies that don’t advertise but even that has limits. How many reviews should a publication do for a HUGE company like Klipsch when they never spend ad dollars? It’s a win/lose scenario. Win for them since they get FREE press, Lose for us since I have to pay my reviewers for the content. With that said, I still try to work with every manufacturer since the content benefits our readership. I can’t stress to you how challenging it is to make a living as a professional reviewer that also runs a magazine. I’m not complaining as I love what I do, but you make it sound like we are all driving around in Ferraris wearing driving gloves. That lucrative lifestyle ironically is what many exotic cable vendors enjoy promoting their overpriced snake oil to people with more money than sense that believe in their pseudo babble drivel. As for reviewers not being “Ready” to review your products, I find that somewhat arrogant presumption on your part. In my case, I built a reference home that has some of the best equipment in the industry (ie. RBH Sound, Perlisten, Revel, Anthem, Storm Audio, Paradigm, etc) and my theater room is professionally acoustically treated by Anthony Grimani. The RT60 decay time in my room hovers around 300msec and I have perfect phase/time response at the MLP in my room using wavelet analysis thanks to the fact I’m running a fully active speaker system with FIR correction. This room is SOTA in every way and that is just one room at my place of many to evaluate equipment. I spent decades studying active speaker approaches and useful EQing to achieve this. As for experience, I’ve heard hundreds of two-channel and home theater systems at trade shows, dealer shows, personal homes, etc for over 25+ years. Yes I’m friggin old. I’ve also went thru Harman audio training which is an incredibly useful tool that EVERYONE should download ant put themselves through. Sean Olive/Floyd Toole have really opened my eyes to properly controlled listening tests. I know you value listening tests, but I never hear you discuss controlled blind listening tests to eliminate expectation biases which are predominant when comparing small or non-existent differences in audio stimuli, especially when dealing with cables. Again, I say all of this with great respect as I am a fan of your products/work. But, I hope you can appreciate the struggles of running an AV publication and the challenges reviewers face. The bottom line is we should all be friends and try to respect varying opinions. At the end of the day, we all just want great sound, right? I hope one day to visit you in Texas at your lovely place and hear your fabulous speakers. On the flip side, I invite you to visit my place in Florida for a demo. The Florida Audio Expo is in Tampa next week. Perhaps you can do a demo room there next year and we can all meet up. I hope to meet you and Ron face to face in the near future.
Feeling/respect is mutual Gene! I would love to hang out and learn from you. However, I will not work out with you. Danny already knows, I live my life by the motto “no pain, no pain.”
"As for reviewers not being “Ready” to review your products, I find that somewhat arrogant presumption on your part. In my case, I built a reference home that has some of the best equipment in the industry" Gene, re-watch the video. He wasn't referring to you or your site at all.
@@Newrecordday2013 ha that's a nice motto. But it's funny I being doing cold plunges a few minutes of uncomfortable makes your life so much better. Also great for immune system. Love your channel.
Sadly, I am not qualified to even listen to speakers. I do not have a dedicated room. I do not have room treatments. I do not have fancy cables. I do not have a perfect source. I do not listen to jazz and classical music. I want my speakers to work for both music and home theater. This is why us “normal” consumers can never truly enjoy the hobby.
16 min mark. Goes off the edge. "You're not ready" "budget level gear" "young guys". As a 50 year old guy. Wtf is that about. Get off my lawn. Maybe it's the method of your message but it comes off as old guy getting butt hurt about something. If you have ever been critical of audio gear made by other people, how can you say others are not ready to review your gear. You need to rethink that statement.
“We don’t get why everyone is so divisive, we need to get along” 1 minute later… “Everyone else is wrong and my room is perfect, not sure why people don’t get it.”
that's not how i accessed what he was trying to get over, plus he was talking to reviewers not audiophiles in general he was simply saying that reviewers ought to know what is possible at the extreme high end to make them better reviewers in the budget and mid fi areas, this man is an engineer as i was before i retired, we can some times come over as arrogant but we don't mean to be we just want what ever industry we are in to be the best it can be
I must say I took parts of this video the same way Chris did... There are better ways to say what he did I think. Hard to bridge that divide using the kind of statements he did!
@@robertrollins7983 it's still ridiculous to suggest that the reviewers opinions aren't valid because their listening rooms are not what he has in mind for his products. Who cares? I want to know what Andrew thinks of a set of speakers in HIS room (as is) relative to all the other speakers he has auditioned. It's all relative and gives an indication of how a product performs in a typical modern home (with hardwood floors and no fancy treatment - most of us can't afford that and/or it won't get past our wife). It's like a bike manufacturer complaining about the type of roads or trails a bike reviewer tests their products on. "Come visit our wind tunnel and we'll teach you about bikes." No thanks, I just want to know how the product performs outside of a lab environment, on the kind of trails that I like to ride on.
@@Monkeyseemonkey79 I think the point Danny would make here is that if the room sucks, just buy whatever speakers you like the looks and budget of. I've heard really good speakers in bad rooms and they don't sound any better than bad speakers in the same room. I'm sure some reviewers have the ability to hear the differences between good and bad speakers (despite what their reviews seem to indicate) but they just don't have the setup to experience it. What Danny is trying to say is that you need to eliminate outside factors to really appreciate how much better a good speaker is than a bad speaker. Finally, I don't think his intent is to say "my room is better than anyone else's." I think his intent is that his room is the only room he can invite people to, and it's the only room he knows for sure is good.
The only issue with this is that everyone who buys speakers, yours or any other company, does not have the luxury of having a dedicated room to listen in. Knowing that a set of speakers will perform just as well in a common living room as they would in a dedicated sound room is far more appropriate for the average review channel listener. As far as the reviewers setup goes, most of the more reputable reviewers always mention distance from back/side walls, toe in etc and will generally caveate the position relative to a proper listening room. You had a couple of valid points, but I think in general you've got quite a few people's backs up for no real reason.
This! If GR Research were only selling to buyers who gave a dedicated and dialed in listening room, their business would go under. Their attitude is elitist and delusional. It's not the first time I've seen an engineer requiring a reality check.
yes there are good reviewers darko, Robinson, British audiophile ,audioholics Gutenberg etc but there are many more who are just plain daft( that's brit for dumb)
@@robertrollins7983 British Audiophile is great. A friendly, conscientious & very knowledgeable reviewer who used to work in the industry as an engineer..
@@sdemosi yes i don't always agree with his assessments for example his ATC STA 19 review as i hate the sound of ATC speakers in general finding them too stiff and boxy but they are technically well measured which is confusing as this hobby has always been ( one man's meat is another poison etc )but if you want a decent review which is both technical and emotional with decent comparisons between amps and other speakers there is No-one better, and his pretty likable bloke as well!
@@robertrollins7983 I always think that having an engineering background often doesn’t help. At the end of the day you are just comparing products and it’s about having good evaluative skills to work out which products are better than others, when they clearly are and most would think so. Engineering also takes people off the hunt of consensus improver products as it’s then hard to turn against your own technicalities. It’s about getting reviews across in smart ways to let the reader read between the lines but still promote the product. What troubles me with lots of technical reviews is that it gets used to bamboozle the viewer into thinking that x person knows their stuff, but the problem with that is that the viewer is then more inclined to believe the review on that basis, when some reviewers don’t give downsides and honestly don’t compare or call it out (in a read between the lines way). The people who then like the videos then become a kind of vacuum chamber for that person because they like the person. I always think the review should stand by itself and if a reviewer proclaims they give the product back, well it tells the viewer they aren’t prepared to let the viewer read between the lines.
woww~ So much of this was suited for a behind the scene conversation. I'm 63. Years back, I had nothing. I had my fathers 1958 zeneth HIFI, hooked up to a car radio, and listened to jazz out of Toronto, across Lake Ontario. Grad school, I still had it. I remember hearing the Chet Baker, Art Pepper, 1956, The Route, 90 miles on the other side of Lake Michegan; never forgot it. I was given a pair a "good" speakers, some Vandersteen 2's, and I hooked them up to a KLH receiver and a $45 cd player. The air was Amazing! Compared to my "previous system", it was. Six months later, the speakers started rattling like lug nuts in a hubcap; they were dry rotted. A stereo shop in town, bought them sight unseen, and in turn, I got into my first tube preamp and amp. After multiple trade-ins and upgrades, I now run monoblock, all tube analog . My Dad was a jazz musician. 80% of our conversations revolved around music. Everytime I turn my system on, I think of him listening with me. Yet, the guy I talk to the most about this, is a coworker, with an L shaped room, running Realistic speakers, a 70's receiver and a crapy TT. He has 40 times the albums I own, and he's happy as a clam, listening to a boombox, because it plays both tape, and cd's. I can talk to him about cables, room treatment, coupling, decoupling, yet when I got him to update to a vintage technics TT, and he heard the difference, that's a win. When I got him monster speaker cables to swap out from thin speaker wires he had, and he heard the difference, that's a win. I gave him little wood wedges to put under his speakers, and he still raves how much cleaner the speakers sound, thats a win. He will never spring for $350 speakers. He'll never let go of that nickle in his hand. He's happy with his stuff, and I'm always questioning. As to the video, When one says, they'll do the recietal, but you have a Steinway, I only play Busendorpher. There may be some value in that, but depending on the audience, that comes off as the hereichy of arrogance.
I don't know what Danny or Ron intended with this video, but I know how I received it. That's all I can know, is how I perceive things. I think it was in poor taste and left me with a soured opinion. It felt condescending. I think Danny in particular should probably just stay in his own lane and mind the future and landscape of GR Research(his business). This added nothing positive to anyone in this hobby.
I feel like people like John Darko do a great job about warning viewers about crap like this. He has called out cranky old men on more than one occasion who think that their way is the only way. Darko has better ears and more time to dedicate to listening than I ever will but he always stresses to buy and use what sounds best to you. He gives examples of ways that you might make your system better but always stresses that if you, personally, cannot hear a difference then what is the point? (I know other reviewers have a similar mindset but Darko seems to stress it more than most, I feel like)
@@mornecoetzee735 Bit of a straw man argument. He may mention it occasionally but it is clearly not his major criteria for judging quality. Having said that you at least made me smile.
@Bob Ahlberg As someone who is relatively new to the hobby myself, I feel like its hard to learn and stay interested when there is so much hostility and elitism in the community, especially among the veterans. Even without all the infighting, its confusing enough when one person is stressing that you need crazy cables that presumably make some appreciable difference or the arguments about specs and numbers or the need to break in new gear. I understand that room correction, speaker placement, bit rate, and even cables make a difference but it is very overwhelming for someone that is new to the scene. The law of diminishing returns is in full force in the audio world and so if I cannot hear the difference between a $100 DAC and one that costs 10x as much, why would I waist the money? I feel like the best way to attract new audiophiles is to let them listen to the music they love in a way that they have never heard it before - Sit them down in front of a well set up, yet modest system and call out the nuances that are normally glossed over to their attention. Help them understand that what they are hearing is achievable for them too. But if you do that with a system that costs as much as a small house, you are going to make that level of detail seem unattainable and in my experience you end up turning that person off from high end audio. I feel like a lot of reviewers that are worth their salt try to expose aspiring audiophiles to the possibilities while avoiding conflict within the community and stressing that you should purchase what sounds good to you and not what sounds good to someone with far more critical listening skill and far more money. (As far as being condescending, I personally find it pretentious that he is deeming anyone who has not listened to his system and uses it as the standard, not worthy of being a reviewer. I also don't like how, at least in my view, he sets himself up as THE authority on all things audio as he is trying to "educate" other reviewers, many of whom have years of experience.)
You come off very patronizing and with little knowledge on how the creator economy works. You’re calling out creators for their opinions on how audio gear is going to be experienced for average users. That’s their user base, people who’s willing to enjoy audio in their home environments, not people who are investing six figures in a sound treated room solely for listening to music. Telling them they need to “learn” how to properly use their gear and that “they’re not ready to listen to your speakers” comes off as you not understanding their jobs nor their public and you’re just invalidating all their work. There’s no denying you have all the experience to back up your claims, it’s just unnecessary and adds little value to what those creators are doing. Also, it’s totally unrealistic to assume a CZcams creator can live off just by their Adsense. Receiving products from manufactures, creating a Patreon, doing giveaways and using affiliate links are completely valid ways to monetize your content without risking your reputation or being a sellout just to make money. People go to this creators because they’ve built a strong portfolio and a community that can prove the authenticity of their work. Monetizing your work won’t change that.
We have All this talk about how do we bring the young generation into the hobby. Saying that the young reviewers arent ready regardless of the level of experience they have is arrogant and is what pushes young people away from this hobby.
This is off-topic, but I have to give a big shout-out to Thomas & Stereo. His attitude is great, his content is great, and his reviews are enlightening.
The arrogance in this video is just straight up bizar. Imagine thinking your way is the only way and or even that people want to do it your way. Did you forget that your preference is exactly that, just a preference?! I am keeping well away from this company, a 10 foot pole would be too short. Dear lord what clownery 🤡
To me this video exactly points to why the whole ''audiophile space'' is a terrible place to be. "My system is better than yours and not only that I am one of the few people that knows how to listen to my system and only I can tell that why my system is better than yours. If you either don't like it or can't supposedly hear it than you're not educated enough, Humpf!''
"My standard is THE standard. All of you peasants who don't have the same resources are not worth of hearing MY creation". Sorry but that's how this video resonated to me. I will be unsubbing from here, sadly.
Danny has responded several times and you guys just aren't acknowledging what he said. He was saying that he observed the younger reviewers need to take room acoustics more seriously because if your acoustics are compromised enough, you will miss hearing some aspects of the gear's performance. He was saying that is important because of how hard the creators of the gear work to get their product to sound a certain way and those reviewers owe it to the manufacturer to be able to extract and acknowledge what the gear is capable of. He also owes it to the viewers because despite the fact that the majority of those viewers might never hear those performance characteristics that are only revealed when the room is adequately out of the way, some viewers do care very much and want to know about the complete performance details of the product.
@@tullskull thanks. I'm sure Danny has acknowledged it but it's hard to follow hundreds of comments and responses. I personally feel many reviewers are doing a decent job at covering room acoustics optimization (Darko's video comes to mind as a fairly recent one). Regardless, I think it's naive to think that young people's way into hi-fi includes room modifications as a "must have" as that's the least appealing way to go. You basically pile on more barriers to entry into this already too elitist hobby! Seeing how tech naturally comes to mind as far as convenient solutions are concerned, progress in DSP's and spatial audio understanding will most likely be the preferred solution of younger folks. Disposable income and space being primary issues for them, not sure a "2-channel music room" is something that makes sense for them. Hence the fact that reviewers testing gear in "normal" conditions makes more sense. IMHO.
I think it was Pete Wells, the new York times food reviewer, who was questioned as to his qualifications for reviewing restaurants as he isn't a trained chef. He replied that he has been eating solid food since he was a child. The entire hearing world is fully qualified to share their opinion on an audio product they've heard. Do you think people should have training before they give you money for your speaker kits? No? I mean it'd be a shame if their untrained ears heard sound from your products.
His complaint is that most reviewers have conflict of interest and use room that is untreated at all. If reviewer can afford $1000 speaker, $200 bass trap is no big deal right? I don't hear him any complaint on having untrained ear.
@@MuhammadIrfan-ye5zf Most people buying $1,000 speakers don’t have $200 bass traps. Same as most people with $5,000 TVs don’t have a perfectly dark room.
Muhammad, you are missing the point. Most of us listen to our music in our living room or rec room. Im not about to get ugly bass traps and other crap to make my look like junk just so it sounds a little better.
I’ve enjoyed both of your videos but all this just seems pretty lower-loop. I don’t know if you intended the vid to be much more positive and ‘uniting’ than it had turned out (to me at least), but I urge you to revisit all this.
I take everything on the internet with a grain of salt. When it comes to personal taste, who to judge? We're both music lovers for over 50 years. I have all kinds of speakers throughout the house, ranging from couple hundreds to a few thousand. All my wife listens to is her smart phone. Andrew Robinson hit home run saying something likes "the systems only has to satisfy you and yourself."
"Andrew Robinson hit home run saying something likes "the systems only has to satisfy you and yourself." Then what value is the review? People can't go to their local audio store and audition gear any more.
So evidently I'm gonna have to buy a new house if i want to enjoy a pair of GR research speakers. 😏 I think designers need to "learn" to design something that doesn't require an anechoic chamber to sound good.
I have to clarify....from my point of view.....A music lover is not the same as an Audio Lover.....A music lover does not necessarily is an Audio Lover but an Audio Lover is a Music Lover as well...No offense.....I hope you understand my point
please explain what makes you the ultimate reviewer or expert? Danny do you have an Audiophile certificate from an acredited school? What if someone doesnt like your speakers? are you going to tell them they are wrong? bottom like is YOU ARE WRONG!... the ultimate reviewers are the end users.... reviewers are just end users as well....
No, the end users are relying to a large degree on the CZcams reviews. As to your questions, I have 30 years of experience doing this. My designs have won pretty much ever industry award, show award, etc. It's time to give back.
@@dannyrichie9743 Yes, we cannot have reviewer complaining "this speaker has muddy bass" - in small room with no sound treatment. Or my favorite "It sounds bit harsh" - used in living room where back wall is 80% glass window.
If im not going to benefit from the nuances in your speakers you’ve worked so hard to create (as i live in a house, not a sound room), i guess im not ready to spend the money.
@@freone111 no, he clearly thinks that professional audio reviewers are "not ready" or incapable of hearing the nuances in his speakers. That they need to learn, to be taught by him. This directly speaks to the consumer, because if a pro isn't ready, what hope does the average consumer have?
Danny telling people they can't review audio gear because they don't have the proper room treatment. Afterwards proceeds to sell "tweaked" speaker kits to people that have no room treatments.
There is a big difference between reviewers and customers, their not the same thing. Reviewers should be able to be trusted. Evidently you have not experienced a decently treated room. The difference is big.
@@rickyblair8802 Not all treated rooms are equal. So it wouldn't make a difference anyways. Many reviewers are listening to gear how the average audiophile would. Some components use an EQ such as DIRAC LIVE which create another variable. Furthermore, to say an audiophile can't interpret a sound signature because their room is not treated exactly like Danny's room is, is just ridiculous.
.....the idea here is to educate people about what they are missing in having bare walls n' floors. You have no idea what your gear is capable of, with all the reflections going on around the room of stray and so late arriving sound waves coming to your ears and standing waves just bouncing around on you. Start with just some sheets, towels and a carpet, then move to some insulation. After how your soundstage opens up and people actually start to seem as if they are in the room with you? You will start investigating into finger foam and such.
@@rickyblair8802 And reviewers should be listening in an environment that would be similar to the use case scenario of a customer; that’s the whole point of a review. To show the average consumer of that product what might be a good fit for them, not what might be a good fit for a dude with an anechoic chamber in his basement.
255k. (46.6k + 66.9k)x 2=... Not 255k. Maybe Mr Robinson isn't the one needing the lessons here. The big fish in the pond often takes the most shots (and don't give me a "watch the video again, we were praising those guys). Putting out a video that says nice things about someone while insinuating they don't know what they are talking about and need to "come learn" is still a shot. (Obviously, from his comment, Gene took it as a shot). What do I know though, I'm just the lowly consumer. Something I do know is that I don't want this kind of immaturity in my life right now. Dannie, I unsubscribed from you a while ago. Ron, dude, I liked your stuff before this, but I'm out. 66.9k -1
You are mistaken. Actually calling out any reviewers that this was directed to would not have been cool. So I called out the ones that I like or respected. Gene and I have already had this conversation and he had a personal invite already. He knew it was not a shot. The same goes for Chris. Andrew and I also exchanged emails in the past that were words of encouragement, and I had nothing but good things to say about him. You are inserting your own feelings into this, and they are off base.
If you can only hear the ability of a speaker in a controlled dedicated listening room then it's not a speaker most people will want. And saying most reviewers are "green" is a bit condescending. I do agree that a lot of these "reviewers" lose credibilty by giving almost every piece of equipment a great review.
No, consumers do deserve to know the capabilities of a product being reviewed, and all speakers (or any product) will sound better when set up properly and the effects of the room are minimized.
@@dannyrichie9743 then those people can read stereophile or watch videos from controlled rooms, not these specific reviewers. My guess is that there's not as big of a demand for that, based on the popularity of these reviewers channels.
@@dannyrichie9743 compare the number of subscribers to the stereophile YT channel vs. cheapaudioman. So yes, what you're looking for would be nice, but not what most people care about.
@@bill72pa Stereophile does not have an active CZcams channel. They have not posted a new video in almost a year. They are a print magazine, not a CZcams channel.
There are many types of reviews. The most successful ones are the emotional reviews of a product. The most accurate ones are the technical reviews of a product. Many of the reviewers fall somewhere in between that. And you can't fault them for having their own format. It's what they do best. And based on view counts and subscription numbers they're probably doing a really good job.
I have been designing systems and acoustics for years. You are completely correct that the room is truly as important as the gear, if not more. That said, you don't need to spend huge bucks to get 90% of the best acoustics. Everything is acoustical since everything absorbs, reflects or diffracts sound. If you understand the physics, you don't need to buy things that say "acoustical" to be acoustical. But one suggestion is, when you said "I will teach you", it sounds "holier than thou". The best way to teach is to not teach but to show. Yes, comparisons teach more than talking or any you tubeer video. My point is "Holier than thou" pushes people off.
Danny has completely exposed the "audiophile" industry as pure fraud. In an industry where reviewers are plied with coke and hookers at audio conventions, of course Danny is "holier than thou", just by default.
The audio enthusiast community is about the most two faced and snobbish hobby community ive ever seen. I come to learn about speakers, amps, wire, etc for the common man. Us common folk don't have 100 grand to dump on home audio! We come to learn the best we can with what we have. The constant degrading and calling out is really disappointing. Like my dad use to tell me as a kid "we may not have the best of everything BUT what WE do have is OURS!" I feel like the audio channels really beat us up st times. Very troubling.
In my late teens and early twenties I worried about what the "experienced" audiophiles thought about gear and what I use. As I gained more and more experience I realized that a good ninety percent of those guys quit learning anything new when they were probably twenty five and just repeated the same tired myths and cliches for the rest of their lives. The few who were truly passionate and interested in the hobby as a whole were rarely snobbish and they love to share the hobby, not preach dogma to newcomers. Once I learned this and the fact that I had heard probably twice as many systems and listened to a vastly wider variety of music, both recorded and live, than almost every self proclaimed snobiophile I'd ever met I quit worrying what they had to say. If I went to Danny's place I'd hear what he hears and I might agree it's great. But I also might find that this is a man with a very peculiar perception of sound from my point of view. In either case it wouldn't bother me to tell him it was great or that I didn't feel moved by it because his opinion of what I should like is completely irrelevant. The major reviews channels that actually have a significant enough following to matter are more than experienced and knowledgeable enough to give a fair review of Lord Ritchie's products but, alas, this is a privileged only afforded to those who pony up the non refundable tribute or make the self funded pilgrimage to Castle DanRitch.
When reviewers try to tell me I need to buy $200 cables I quickly lose interest. Or that a $900 DAC is great value. Another red flag is if they never talk about actual music, or any new music since 1985.
I agree, the amount of snobiness in the home audio community is staggering. I can hear the pretension oozing out of him in this video. People have to remember that a lot of these people have money and most of them are pushing 50. With money there's always going to be a certain amount of snobiness from some. I mention age only because you have to take everything these guys say with a grain of salt because they don't even hear a portion of the audio spectrum anymore. They don't even know how their amps, speakers or anything else truly sound because they're lucky to hear past 13khz. So when he goes on about acoustically treated rooms and proper equipment and hearing things properly, well it's all just a bit funny.
@@five5x Listening & hearing are different things. Just like looking & seeing. I see a lot of young people content with compressed audio. Are they all deaf ? Look at the number of geniuses who think health comes in a syrringe...
I’m an “audiophile’; whatever that means. High end audio has got to be the biggest snake oil sector that there is in any industry. It’s all about MONEY. No one, and I mean no one, is going to say that their four thousand dollar coat hanger interconnects sound like sh1t.
Interesting, so you think your customers have equal rooms as your testing lab? I would think most people don't. They have no room treatments, are not in a position to place the speakers way in the room. So, a review more geared to the general customers isn't a bad thing. You can still do a comparison in less than optimal rooms. It will still give an idea of what to expect from a product. I guess people that want to extract the maximum out of their system will do more research then just watch a review channel.
So I don't know if this whole dustup is legit or what. I subscribe to many audio info-related channels and see several of them are getting mileage out of the GR callout video, which is admittedly entertaining. I think for me GR will lack the credibility to make such a "call out" video until they subject their products to the same scrutiny that every other manufacturer does. When you make a living tearing down and selling fixes to measured speaker responses (measurements aren't everything) and then won't make your product available to the same scrutiny it just smells bad. And To say that other reviewers aren't ready to listen to your products seems rather convenient for the guy selling that product. My two cents.
Agree. I've seen Danny online and I've looked over some of the his crazy antics like turning a piece of wire as an antenna to prove a point. With this, I've lost interest in him, his work and by extension New Record Day. This kind of toxic reporting only serves to destroy the audio community. He's become the same as ASR, and those guys have nothing but ridicule for him. If he honestly wants to change things, this is not the way. Out. P.S. GR Research is a manufacturer/seller. Using his logic, I shouldnt trust him. Fine, point accepted.
Totally agree. Danny uses the excuse that reviewers "aren't ready", so that he doesn't have to subject his designs to outside scrutiny. There are plenty of very experienced reviewers out there who are more than capable of a proper evaluation. But Danny wants them to come to his place so he can "teach" them. At one point I had an interest in buying GR speakers as I have built electronics and cabinets before. But I've found it very difficult to find anyone but Danny's friends to give reviews on his products. You'll see some positive reviews on various blogs, but you don't know who they are or what their tastes are compared to yours. And the fact that Danny "improves" the designs of speakers from major and respected manufacturers strikes me as the ultimate in arrogance. He leads you to believe the he is the best speaker designer out there. Upgrading parts, yes. That's easy though, as the manufacturer used cheaper parts to hit the necessary price point. So of course, spending another couple hundred dollars on upgrades will improve it! Redesigning crossovers to improve on an Andrew Jones design? I don't think so. And what Danny's background? Try finding that out.
Yes, the general audience is older which means we are very well aware of how audio magazines make their money. Of course, some online reviewers make a portion of their money in a very similar manner. So we don't need the lecture as if you're revealing a deeply held secret. I will agree that magazine reviewers more so than online reviewers have greater pressure on them to be positive but I've read many reviews in which it was clear the writer was less than thrilled with the product. As for online reviewers, very few of them act as if everything is the next greatest thing ever. Guttenberg and Sean at Zero Fidelity have both said if a product is bad they just don't do the review. So naturally the products they do review are going to viewed in a more positive light because they made the review cut in the first place. How many other channels have the same policy but don't reveal it, I have no idea. Let's not forget that you make judgements about products without listening to them and criticize them simply because they don't measure they way you think they should. I know, I know, you're the audio Zeuss that we should all bow down to as your perception of sound is the only correct viewpoint on the subject but that's, well, merely your opinion. And you're opinion is worth exactly what I paid for it just like mine is worth what you paid. Look, if I were to ever find myself out in the boonies near Wichita Falls and I were to stop in for a listen I might very well find your system to be the greatest in history. But that's in your room so it's likely irrelevant in my home as I may not have the space or the funds to execute it in the same manner you have in your dedicated space. And the overwhelming majority of audiophiles don't have the space or the funds either. On the other hand I might find your system to be lacking in some way in which case I would be courteous, say it was nice, and move on to something I preferred more. The issue I have is that you seem totally convinced that there is no way anyone could ever hope to experience something better than what your system produces. That's more than a bit arrogant and bordering on narcissistic. Over the years I've heard many a supposedly spectacular "audiophile systems" that the owner was so very proud of because it did one particular thing extremely well, like imaging or sound stage depth. They were so enamored with these particular traits that they were blissfully ignorant to the fact that other aspects of the system, such as dynamics, extension, detail or tone was painfully lacking. Maybe you're one of these guys and maybe you're not. Who knows? You have a certain way you like things to sound and that's fine but it's not the official, written on stone tablets from God in heaven, way that reproduced sound should sound. In the end we may agree that the way you like things to sound is the same way I like things to sound and that you've hit the mark. Or we may find that you and I have very different ideas about how sound should be reproduced. The difference is I would allow you your opinion because that's all it is while you would not accept, intellectually at least, that I have a right to feel the way I do and that we're both correct because sound is a subjective subject. Instead, you sit here on this video pretending that reviewers shouldn't get samples of your products because they are tone deaf buffoons that need to be taught how to hear your products. That's like a guy claiming he makes the best fried chicken in the world but before folks can taste it they must attend a two week fried chicken tasting camp in order to understand that when you taste his fried chicken you are tasting the best. Hey, put yourself out there if you're so confident in your gear and let the chips fall where they may. You try and cover your arrogance and condescension for anything not beholden to the Danny way of seeing things with a soft spoken, aw shucks, I'm just trying to help way of speaking. However, anyone who is paying attention and can think for themselves sees a man who needs to either take a step down off his DIY pedestal (which I'm sure is better than anyone else's pedestal) or who needs to put his money where his mouth is and send his products out for review. If they are as good as you claim then what is there to worry about? I know user error is the cause for a good many negative reviews regarding any product but high end audio reviewers aren't usually that foolish. Besides, you can send your products to people you agree with. But to suggest that the only way people should ever judge your equipment is in your home, not theirs, with your associated equipment, not theirs, and with your sound treatment, not theirs is ridiculous. News flash, unless you want reviewers and the general public to come live with you then your speakers must work well in their spaces.
Very well said sir.....I feel the need to stand up and slow clap after reading your post but I'm in bed and I'm positive my wife would believe I'm sleep walking. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to post ads for all of my entry level gear because clearly I'm not ready 🙄
WOW, I think your being a bit hard on poor old Danny , he has won a few prizes at audio shows for the sound of his systems , Whist i agree with your points about "some professional arrogance " having watched the bloke (that's British for GUY lol) he seems to me to be pretty dedicated and an all round person that is better in this world than the next , i dont think he meant that for one minute , i think he was just saying that new reviewers ought to know what is possible at the extreme HI end in order to see /hear what is close to it at the budget & mid fi level which would make them much more discerning reviewers .for example JOHN Darko made a video in which he stated that "Sorry high end audio is dead " this coming from a supposed hi fi reviewer is just bloody daft and he ought to be ashamed of himself, because if that the case and we are only going to be left with vinyl at best and downloads at worse like MQA which to me is lossy crap then why bother at all seems to me he either shot himself in the foot , or wants to destroy the hi fi industry ?
Manufacturers who have total confidence in the quality of their products don't have to go around trying to cherry pick their reviews. They also don't make wildly inaccurate over-generalizations of how the review process actually works in practice. Ron, you've made a very serious error of judgement in getting involved in this absurd and frankly ludicrous video of quite staggering arrogance.
While I can agree with what has been mentioned about magazine reviewers selling gear and paid reviews on magazines (print and digital) - I must also mention that probably not all audio enthusiasts (I'll avoid the term audiophile) have either the space or means for ideal speaker placement and/or room treatment. For such audio enthusiasts (yours truly included) - it is equally important how gear sounds in less than ideal environments. I've had the good fortune of listening to high end gear in ideal setups (at dealers). But there are people like me who cannot buy/rent an apartment because the speakers need to be setup in a particular way and the room treated. We have to make do with what we have which is maybe our den or our living room. So we need to rely on those reviewers who have setups like ours and provide their opinion based on those same setups.
....it is sad man, one needs some basic set of room treatment to follow them around. To that they add a room and then gear to listen to. You have it all backwards in your understanding of high fidelity. Not to say one can't just be enjoying the music in their head, or say some Bluetooth speaker amping up your phone's signal.
I think it is a little arrogant to state that "some youtubers are not ready". Manufacturers will always send their equipment to youtubers that have a tendency to prefer the manufacturers sound. That is why a lot of youtubers often review multiple products from one manufacturer or group. I'm not so sure if that is a bad thing, it is just the way it is. If I would work at the Harbeth marketing department I would never send my speakers over to a youtuber that bangs on about how great Paradigm or Revel speakers are and likes analytical sounding speakers. Nothing wrong with Paradigm or Revel, but it is not the audience who appriciates a BBC style sound. So it would be a stupid choice to put in any effort knowing the outcome will be negative. If a youtuber is in some kind a way working with advertisements, receives the equipment from a distributor or manufacturer, then true objectivity is gone. The only way to work around this, is that the audience pays directly to the youtuber for doing the testing, this way the youtuber has a budget to buy the equipment that is requested by the audience itself. imagine a youtuber with 100.000 subscribers is able to get 20.000 of them to pay 50 cents a month (which is hardly anything for an individual compared to the Spotify, Tidal, HBO and Netflix contracts they already have). He would have 10.000 Dollars (Euros, Russian Roebels or Djiboutian Franks if you like) to get new hifi gear and sell reviewed gear. The only thing to change the hifi industry is people willing to pay directly to a reviewer and thus preventing him or her to fall in the big marketing traps. That is how we need to change our system. If you want something honest and good, wether its products or reviews, you need to pay for it. Stop buying the big magazines filled with advertisements and instead pick a few of your favorite youtubers and donate some small amounts of money so they can give you an objective view in this overwelming, big multinational marketing machine that is controlling your perception of what is good and not.
Your initial instinct to ask a second opinion for this video was good. Unfortunate that it ended up getting published. I am baffled that both of you thought this was a good video to make. Maybe you mean well but the angle and delivery of the message is a complete disaster.
Dude you hit the nail on the head, Danny is starting to walk outside his shoes lately. Dude does great work on crossovers what not. His cable videos are a absolute joke from a technical and even biased view. Yuck..hate this, love the channel just not how he is pretending to be special
.....show's how you don't understand what it is your seeing in the video your watching and measurements, or how the guy goes about it. Your speaking out of ignorance:-)
This is the audiophile equivalent of "git gud scrub". But the fact is that many of these channels are popular because they're reviewing gear in real world situations for real world budgets. I never considered myself an "audiophile". I just want something that doesn't suck, and I don't want to spend the equivalent amount of money as a decent automobile. Those are 2 separate priorities for me and on entirely different levels.
I'm not an 'audiophile' (as used in the marketing media). I am a recording engineer, working in my field for almost twenty years. My living depends on what happens between the sound waves hitting a microphone and the sound waves hitting the listener's ear. Nothing more. There are also people in my industry who make a lot of money talking about the technical aspects of sound in flowery, worn out thesaurus language, and if they had to do what I do for a living they would starve to death. There are people like this in every industry. Thank you, Danny, for your honesty, truthfulness and courage on saying what needs to be said. You've sold me, not only on you as a man, but on the sincerity of your product, as well. As for the others? Get out your drawing boards, table saws and solder irons and let's see what you've got. I can wait.
I used to review PC hardware online. I had simple rules for a fair evaluation. One, benchmarks matter most when there is a limitation found, not a new high score. Two, testing in a perfect setup should only be used to show the claimed performance is achievable. Three, place the review item into a standard environment, install the software, set up the hardware, talk to the balance and user experience in a real-world setting.
I watched NRD & GR for teardown insights, but always found them both more then a little annoying & theatrical, this dumpster fire train wreck is truly a dream.... 😂
Did you see the NRD video he back tracks on a middling review of Buchardt speakers? He acknowledges how every other reviewer praised the speakers, then says he discovered his speaker stands were bad and after changing them "Realized" the Buchardts are now great speakers. Total liar.
@@conchobar No, I couldn't stand him from day one and only watched his teardowns on mute, but he did review some small diameter driver speakers which I was interested in which no one else reviewed, but he's unbearable really. You get the feeling that he thinks people can't get enough of staring at the back of his head or his face. His talk is just not as absorbing as any of the other audiophile you tubers, personally my favorite is "Stereo Review X". 😊
@@SantanKGhey1234 So the experts aren't the people that develop the product? The experts are the people that buy them? If that were true then the wrong people would be designing the products.
@@dannyrichie9743 you're wrong again... the experts are the end users... as a successful designer or manufacturer, you take feedback and considerations from the end users who actually use products in real world situations... an anechoic chamber is not a real world situation... Nobody listens to music in a perfect room, there is no given certified given standard anywhere.... so you are very wrong
The dirty little secret that wasn't brought up in the video, and which is a major questionable source of income for some CZcams reviewers, is sponsored links. For many reviewers, this is actually their primary source of income, and is much more lucrative than the CZcams partner payouts. How can a review be objective, when the reviewer is getting paid every time someone clicks on the link in their video to buy the product being reviewed? Talk about paid reviews! I know that some CZcams reviewers won't use sponsored links, because they feel it corrupts the process. Steve Guttenberg and Chris at Vinyl Attack are two of them. But most of the reviewers that Danny cites as his favorites for their "professionalism" use sponsored links, Andrew Robinson does, Gene DellaSalla at Audioholics does, and most pertinent to this video, Ron at New Record Day does. It seems it's kind of rich to hear these people professing their honesty, while calling out other reviewers for being "corrupted."
I don't have a problem with a reviewer using sponsored links. My point was to warn the "new guard" that if they create the perception of being paid off for reviews that it will hurt their credibility.
Pop on, the very reason I unsubscribed from Andrew Robinson quite a while ago, the mention of the products full title with every breath it got embarrassing to watch. To me I was watching a paid promotion every time so I quit as I have done with a couple of others.
YOU said "within your budget." MY budget doesn't include a "listening room" or a bunch of "room treatments." My budget includes my current surroundings, which is all that I can afford at this time in my life. I don't want to, or can justify the expense, of going down the rabbit hole to keep chasing the perfect sound, because I don't think it really exists. If I'm happy with my 2 current systems, that's all that really matters to me, and I couldn't care less what anyone else might think about it.
My biggest disappointment with this dumpster fire is Ron’s lapse of judgement in allowing himself to be part and parcel of this mess. If Danny wants to parade once again his condescending attitude and closed-minded approach to audio, that’s his prerogative. But for Ron to let himself be pulled into this, and -- like it or not - to share guilt by association, damages his reputation significantly. It appears this Texas cabal of reviewers has an Alamo mentality. They might think they’re making an heroic last stand, but at the end of the day, they won’t be standing.
"closed-minded" What, you can't handle the truth? Too many "reviewers" don't know as much as they believe they do, period. Most don't have the proper room acoustics or equipment to test and quite frankly don't have the knowledge of what they're blabbering about. As far as magazine reviews, Danny is spot on the money- the advertisers are paying their salaries, THAT'S A FACT. Then there are the youtube "comparators" who shoot a video of two different products and someone is supposed to hear the difference in a room that has unknown acoustics, questionable mics, compressed audio tracks, played on a PC with crap audio. Oh, that's pure genius. For 50+ years an audio enthusiast and sold Audio equipment, I found Danny's statements factual. Will many people be able to hear the improvements he makes? NO, and he explains why they won't. Chill snowflake, try listening more and babbling less.
@@HumanAction1 Its the opposite, the owner of tekton is a drama queen as he didnt like the review ron gave him so he started crying like a lil biatch. LOL
Danny - Having watched your videos for years I know the importance you place on integrity, quality, and transparency. Your love for products, the industry, and engaging new generations is apparent. I thank you for your efforts, passion, and honesty. As a former tech reviewer myself, I certainly agree with many of your perspectives, though I certainly take more issue with the practices of those on CZcams than you do. Even so, just because one can say something doesn’t always mean they should. Had your comments been tempered with more care and more grace, they might have been received by both those within and without the CZcams community much better and more readily. I hope you’ll take the time to watch your video again, see how some of the comments might be received by others, and make a follow up video clearing up any miscommunications and extending again what was a genuine offer on your part to share your wealth of knowledge with others. Thanks for all you do!
I'm glad I only watched 8 minutes of this. Like most people say, they having a room that they live in & not a the luxury of a treated room, but basically, the vast majority of gear out there is decent at their respective price points. I have a 35K value system that I love, but I'm equally happy hearing a great song on a crappy radio that has zero hi-fi quality.
Measurements for consumers are are really not important, unless your trying to correct something, if you see an FR chart for a speaker and it looks poor but you like the sound of the speaker in person, what do you do? what becomes more important at this moment in time?, the graph you see with your eyes or the sound you're hearing with your ears? I've been in the headphone game a long time, many many years ago I used to try and judge a headphone using it's FR chart, and because of that I ended up avoiding quite a few headphones that I later came to regret as when I auditioned some of them loved what I was hearing, listen first, and then if you feel something is off look at the FR graph and see if it corelates with your ears, there are a lot of psychoacoustic minefields when it comes to sound/audio, even looking at a FR chart before you listen to a speaker will effect how you perceive the sound. I don't think it's right that Danny calls out 'bedroom' reviewers that don't have an optimum environment in which the speakers are being auditioned, lets be honest here, 99% of people are not going to have room treatment, he says he watches some of the reviews online and to quote Danny, "You don't come across as audiophiles, you're not there yet, your reviewing budget level gear" , first of all you can ignore that sentiment straightaway, it's this type of antiquated pompous attitude that put's people off this hobby, there is no budget for being a 'audiophile', all that is required is being enthusiastic about equipment for playing recorded sound, and it's quality, that's it. Also, he states "your doing a review of some product in a bedroom, you got a bed over here on one side of the room, you got speakers up against the wall, there's a big blank empty wall in the middle of speakers", we have to be honest here, a large majority of speakers end up in non ideal environments,, probably 99% of them, bedrooms, sparse lounges, on shelves etc, now yes, it's not a bad thing to try to at least optimise the positioning of your speakers, maybe throw a rug down, the basics essentially, but not many people will go beyond that due to it's inherent impracticability, so it's not always a good thing to judge a speaker with in-room measurements in an optimum setting and then imagine your going to hear the same once it's in your house!, sometimes I value the opinion from a 'bedroom' reviewer more because because of this, it's a regular guy/gal, talking about a speaker in a 'regular' environment, and that's relatable. Consider this, He says you can't really trust these reviewers based on their less than optimal environments/equipment, but does he really know the danger of trusting speaker reviews and measurements done in a studio or optimised listening room?, you then fall into a potentially worse trap which many people do at their local hi-fi store, we all know what's it like to hear a speaker in a local stores listening room and be wowed, only to get it home and feel disappointed, I actually think more speakers should be tested and reviewed in 'normal' environments, because ultimately that's the sound we're going to hear. Personally think these 'bedroom reviewers' are doing a great job, and most importantly they are getting people into Hi-Fi, it wasn't so long ago we thought traditional Hi-FI was dying out, but these guys are introducing a new younger generation into this amazing hobby and that can only be a good thing. Please guys, remember GR Research isn't a charity, it's a business.
There's a lack of discussion on source material in most of these threads. I listen to a a wide variety of music and the recording quality is so broad that you can't really establish the quality of the system or are we supposed to only listen to tracks that the audio world thinks are of high quality? I only have three recordings I use to make sure all is OK on the system and sometimes I have to go to them after listening to good music but bad production just to make sure it's not the "system" that has gone bad. Does Danny have tracks he recommends both on vinyl, CD and streaming? What does he listen for on those recordings? That might help us evaluate systems. We can't all have acoustically designed rooms and so it's important to know what makes a decent system for an average living space. Andrew Robinson does seem to do this when you see the room he positions his equipment in.
Interesting video. Haven't watched all of this video yet, however one thing that stands out in a negative way is your definition of "audiophile". Saying that someone is not an audiophile because they're only reviewing budget level gear is the kind of the elitist crap that demonstrates everything wrong with the audio industry. Danny you should know better. Most of us don't have treated rooms. Most of us can't afford to drop $5K, little own $30K ( that's a car ) on a preamp, an integrated amp, or speakers. I would argue that the true audiophiles in the industry are the ones who are actively wanting to open up, and change the landscape of the audio industry, to make it more accessible to the lower budget crowd, like me. Getting more people into audio is good for everybody, and the more people out there who understand that you don't need to sell your car to fund a nice 2 channel audio system, the better. My desktop system consists of a topping D50s dac, a burson funk amp, & KEF LS50 Meta's. Including cables this is a $3.5K system. Yeah, it's no doubt considered budget by individuals who own an integrated that alone costs more than my entire system, but so what? I LOVE my setup. It sounds fantastic, considering it isn't setup in it's own room ( shock horror ). Do I hope to transition to a proper room that will give me the opportunity to treat it for sound? Absolutely. In the meantime, due to my current living configuration, this is all I can do. I'm sure there's others in the same boat. Lastly, we need more YT reviewers talking about budget gear. My biggest frustration is watching a video reviewing a set of passives, only to find out at the end that the amp they used is $10K, & a DAC thats $4K. No thanks. I value my finances, and my marriage.
There's already a lot of discussion about this, but frankly I can totally relate to what has been said. Though you might have better created two separate videos. One that calls out the reviewers to come and take a listen, and a separate one to talk about reviewer ethics.
I'm in HIFI since 1970 and I had one basic rule: Buy only stuff that I could listen to for several days . Have to admit sometimes the choice was not very big depending on where I was working(in over 20 countries) and sometimes the choice was overwhelming. But my basic rule never let me down.
Just HV to comment that except for personal audio maybe including even that the market for audiophiles is no longer mainstream. Maybe what's really urgent is bringing more people to appreciate sound quality and have more people, younger people including women into the hobby. Bringing it to the mainstream again would be the best thing that could happen to the industry and that could maybe even make YT enough money to rely on the review aspect and buy all their review samples to minimize perception of bias. Cheers and Happy Listening to everyone. Hoping that everyone in the audiophile community could work on that.
The true innovation/challenge is to make a speaker/system that sounds great in any environment with a low accessible consumer price range. That is were the future lies, dont you think?
I follow a choice select few of reviewers such as Thomas Stereo, John Darko, Terry from POPS and Tarun from A British Audiophile. They seem the most genuine to me and more importantly knowledgeable. This was an interesting video and you made some interesting points.
Some things never change. Having over 25 years in the industry as a retailer, these issues are as true today as they were in the 80's and 90's. Reviews and advertising dollars, livingroom vs listening room (wife vs husband), engineers vs listeners. Hobbyist vs audio nut case. Same issues today in the car detailing world.
@@rocketmail125 You're absolutely correct Darrin. When I think back, it was the ipod, and small satellite/ sub systems (ceiling speakers), were the beginning of the end of serious listening by in large.
Bottom line is invitations presented in public rather than private turns the invitation into a provocation to called out reviewers. This suggests the called-out reviewers are not credentialed enough and need more training; thus, these reviewers will suffer credibility whether they accept or reject the invitation. This would upset me if I was a credentialed reviewer.
I tend to feel if the reviewer cant accept it in the light that it was clearly offered, perhaps that credential is not worth as much as you might think.
I have to agree with Charles here. I like the GR Research videos in general. But he took at shot at reviewers. I mean look at the Title: (IN CAPITAL LETTERS). ‘CALLING OUT the REVIEWERS!’ This was pissing on the bushes.
Very clever Danny! But I can see what you are doing, nice angle for click bait, faux dramatic concern for snake-oil reviewers you quite rightly infer that are paid by the manufacturer to hype that brand whilst using the same technique to sell your own snake oil cable’s directly. And the audiophile comments? I cannot stand that word and the way it’s banded about, as though you are of a higher calling , more worthy etc. You use clever manipulation and word play to carefully build a case and a reversed engineered narrative to suggest that your claims for your product can’t be possibly be challenged as the reviewers are simply not Audiophile enough! Well played Danny, but some of us can see through you, likeable as you are! 🤗 And why is that you stress that you listen to your cables to hear the difference instead of objectively measuring the performance but on speakers (for your upgrade kits) do the complete opposite? Who cares how the speakers measure if they sound good in your room . Again your sales pitch reversed engineered to fit your agenda for the product you want to move. I watched your Linton review the other night , the 3 way old school design speaker and you were seriously suggesting that somebody pay 700 dollars (I think) for your upgrade, nearly as much as the speaker itself. Completely insane, they would better of Just buying a more expensive speaker that they can audition/listen to in the first place as opposed to a total outlay that YOU are telling them (As the self proclaimed Audiophile) sounds better.
Danny is full of it. Danny just has a bit more knowledge then some folks but he knows that if Amir tests his spekars mods the changes will either be miniscule or ruin the sound. I saw him try and tell people to change the whole sound of a British speaker...it was awful. I also get sick of him selling his extras ..the cabinet paper, the speaker couplers ( or whatever he calls them) and of course the cables. It's a good scam. I am never watching him again.
After over 35 years of being into audio this is my response. Reviewers are simply expressing an opinion. Read, listen to and watch sufficient reviews and get to know which reviewers opinions ring true with you, and which reviews are influenced by ‘sweeteners’. As regards Danny - whilst I appreciate that speaker manufacturers build speakers to a specific budget, which may force them to compromise on the quality in some areas. I also appreciate that Danny could design kits that could potentially improve a speaker, all I ever hear from him is measurements, measurements, measurements. The biggest lesson and most important lesson I’ve learned is that measurements and specifications should only be used as very general guidelines. Purchasing decisions should be influenced by 2 things, your wallet and your ears. If I have £3000 to spend on a pair of speakers, I would not spend £3000 on a pair of speakers I was not entirely happy with and then spend £800 on a kit to potentially improve them. I would take the £3800 and purchase a pair of stock speakers that satisfied my listening preference.
The thing is, as much as I despise this video, and as much as it has put me off watching any of his future videos, his logic is sound, crossover quality matters and in reality if you spent the $3000 on speakers as you mentioned, then purchased the improved parts kit you might actually end up with something that is worth more like 4500+++ I can say that from my experience with building 5/6 pairs of diy speakers. You’re right though, reviewers are completely entitled to their opinion and I don’t believe they need perfect rooms. After all, most of us watch reviews purely as entertainment already having a system we are happy with. I think this video was all about wanting to be some sort of top dog, making claim to having the best system in the country. Which I highly doubt. If all these reviewers come away from hearing his system and singing it’s praises on CZcams he will get huge business traffic. Period. If he truely just wanted to help, it should have been via private invite in a humble manner allowing the invitees to decline or accept in private. This might then have resulted in the desired effect down the line. He delivers good information which I appreciate, but at the end of the day, you have to like the persona delivering the information and this video has spoilt my appreciation of the content. It’s a shame.
Drama, passion, anger, joy, mine is bigger than yours, what would be the next episode? This is a Mexican telenovela!.... l am afraid the message of this video did not pass well. It causes division : (
If i am unwilling or unable to place my speakers at the best sounding locations in my room or to have any room treatments will i hear the advantages of GR modded speakers? I think that question is the basis for becoming an audiophile in the real sense. You have to be willing to buy excellent equipment and have the willingness and dollars to take it to the next step. I am a closet audiophile unable or unwilling to go that extra mile to join the club.
i think it comes down to the defnition of "audiophile". For me its simply someone who cares about the way music sounds and that can manifest itself into a wide spectrum of levels and degrees, none being better or more correct. One is no more or no less an audiophile if you dont prescribe to someone elses laundry list of requirements .
I am pretty much where you are at and I think that the answer to your question about getting the benefit out of better gear is dependent on what you have for a room. Danny is saying that a well designed speaker will sound better in general, but environment is a big factor in getting all of the benefits of the design. For instance, if you are trying to enjoy some music that has certain softer elements that you really like, you will tune into those moments in the music. If your listening room windows are open and someone is running a lawn mower directly outside of them, you will promptly close the windows to improve the sound in the room. You just applied sound treatment. You improved room acoustics by damping external intruding sound. As we become aware of the different levels of treatment that we can perform, we may find ourselves willing to make some changes in order to get noticeably better sound. Moving speakers seems to be a fairly simple change. Why not try different locations and see if it makes a significant difference? What may be useful to hear from Danny would be a simple tutorial on the three or four most basic things that can be done to the listening environment to get the most out of a pair of speakers without making major changes to the environment.
I love Danny’s videos , I’m a Data driven individual, as a cyclist I rely on my bike computer to provide me numbers , watts , cadence heart rate , nice to see graphs showing how a speaker is performing, most that I’ve seen are poor , but I’ve listened to speakers that Danny’s has measured and response are all over the place , but to my ears they sound amazing, and have bought them . Trust your ears 👂, Danny , keep the videos coming buddy 👍
I dont know if I really agree. I installed, designed and sold car audio for a few years. I tried to focus on HQL no SPL (those were things in the 90's). Cars are all shaped different. You can spend crazy money treating the car to make it ideal, but really, the speakers should work TO the car, and not the car TO the speakers. There was NEVER a single combination of receivers + amps + speakers that produced amazing results in all cars. THere were often the wonkiest combos that created the most amazing sound stages and sonic balance. When people came in and asked "what should I get?" I actually had to give them an answer. I couldnt just say "you arent ready". I couldnt say "there is no perfect system". We built the system with the budget they had in mind, and the car they provided, and in the end, you fixed the bad things with sound processing ie. eq, xovers, and dsp. For the most part, every customer was happy because it was a step up from the factory stereo, even if it wasnt anywhere near ideal. Everyone that has ears is qualified to have an opinion. Im so sick of some idea of a reference. Your reference is what you accepted as such. If you like a crap ton of bass and scooped mids, then that perfectly okay. Half my customers just wanted a crap ton of subwoofers and a high power dirty amp (because clean doesnt matter for low frequencies). I didnt tell them how much there reference sucked. I gave them what they wanted and they enjoyed the hell out of it. Home theater doesnt need uncolored speakers. Honestly HiFi audio doesnt either, unless you have some odd sense that every album has ideal engineering; cause they dont. What I want in a review is just facts like: the speaker farts out at this frequency, or the high end makes your ear drums bleed on cymbal heavy music, or the snare and kick sound real to life, etc. I dont want a stupid chart. Give me 3 albums, one over engineered, one raw, and one just average and tell me how all three sounded. Done ranting.
You do realize Ron from New Record Day did a paid review for Tekton. He also gets free gear and resales it for income. He admits this. I think he reviews your products as well even though you guys are friends.
Hey @Sean B, I have been very open about the one paid review I have done while running NRD, let's NOT pretend that its some kind of a secret waiting to get out. Second, yes, I have been given some free products over the 8 years of doing this and in those cases, I have either given those products away or in some cases, sold them. What I HAVE NOT done is arrange or barter gear in exchange for a review which is the example given in this video. Let's make sure we being fair and honest in these comments and examples, cool?
@@Newrecordday2013 And you review your friend Danny Ritchie’s products. Do you want to address that? If you see my comments I am stating facts but I am not creating narratives.
@@seanb3303 I am also friends with Andrew Jones, Clayton Shaw, Dan Wright, Sandy Gross, Wendell Diller, Mat Weisfield, Ze'ev Schlik (the list goes on and on). Should I not review any of their products because we are friends as well? With Dannys products, the NX-Oticas and H Frame Subwoofers (i've spent the most time talking about), I paid for them while taking a break from the channel years ago (when we were fostering). So yeah - nothing was given to me and there never has been any products "given" to me to review by Danny. I was a customer of his before I ever talked about the Oticas. What else do you have for me @Sean B? Thanks for the conversation and questions.
@@seanb3303 I have been working in audio retail and installation for many years. Focal, dyns, bewith japan, jbl etc. I am friends with all the Distributors but there is no BiAs when critisize their products. Most the things you will tell them they already know and we are honest in telling a costumer. Being friends is not an issue until you make it
Hi Danny.......I'd like to accept your offer of coming to your place in Texas where you can put me up for a day, and looking at (and listening to) your setup !........ Will I have to provide my own meals ?
The reason a speaker cable can alter the sound is not that the signal that goes through that cable changes. The cable becomes a part of the amplifier circuit and some poorly designed amplifiers are very sensitive to those changes. If a speaker cable (or even worse, cable risers) makes a big difference, then sell your amplifier and get one that doesn't get affected by cable changes. Then you can use telephone wire and it won't make a difference.
I think you need to worry more about stocking parts for your kits, and less about audio channels who make peanuts and put in a lot of work. Shame on you Ron for being a part of this elitist trash.
Speaker designers and manufacturers MUST have the best rooms and equipment in order to do their job properly. The vast majority of audio enthusiasts are never going to be in this position - for a variety of reasons. I would say that a reviewers job is to represent the buying public. They need a reference system that they know well in order to be able to perceive audible changes whether subtle or dramatic. Ideally they should also have a variety of equipment to allow themselves to hear what their readers/listeners might experience. I don't think it is incumbent on reviewers to put themselves in the position of designers - it is to put themselves in the position of customers.
Exactly and nobody watches a beginner reviewer and thinks oh he must have worlds of experience. You watch them because their relatable, they have heard as many systems as you. The lack of experience is valuable in that if they are getting enjoyment out of a piece of gear than you are likely to enjoy it as well.
learning to hear instead of listen is a start.. it takes time and someone to show you how unless your one of the golden few.. and I mean golden few.. that can hear instead of listen out of the box.. now.. if you have never heard properly and on a couple of good systems or pair.. then you could just settle for the HT in a box and be happy.. But if you want better.. like a better car.. better tool.. better anything.. and you see the value.. then learn how.. invest your time to learn.. and it will pay off and you will be much happier.. Hearing gives you the ability to find gems that don't cost tons of money.. or appreciating the ones that do. Just a thought.. `
I agree with that, but I think he's basically correct and describing the conflicts of interest that CZcamsrs have. It is ethically dubious to be selling all the products you get to review.
This is the same conversation we have in the wine industry. The Washington State wineries only get better if they receive valid critiques on their efforts. Reviewers educate the consumers, who then raise the bar for wineries. It is one thing to have a great looking wine label, but what you want is for the consumers to avoid wines with faults and buy well made product, at whatever price point is appropriate. There can be great budget wine and bad premium wine. Tasting wines side by side and talking it through will increase your awareness leaps and bounds. Like the budget speakers in the garage, the best wine can be the modest one you are drinking with good friends in a fun environment. Thanks for your dedication to education.
but are you telling people they are greatly missing out by buying the $20 bottle instead of the $100? and if they don't taste a difference it's because "their wine glass is inferior...
This is not a video for buyers. This video is for youtubers reviewing gear. They should be responsible enough to since they are putting put information
I found Vinyl Attack early on, I think I was one of his first 1k subscribers, really enjoy his content and agree with everything you say about him. I still love my BR 03s though ;-)
Thanks for saying what I have been feeling for a very long time. Your explanation of the CZcams audiopiles, their approach, tools, methods, gear, technical abilities and the importance of remaining brand agnostic. As for room treatments and "the average room" I would say that some of us are a cut above average and do have dedication to optimizing our listening environments. Not to the degree Danny may but a balance between function and form. You do hit the mark saying it's all about the music. Every listener and every reviewers opinion is just that - opinion. Please consider the test you mention. My audio club did similar. Place the listener in the sweet spot and keep the speakers behind a thin curtain. In this way you learn quickly who understands and who is just spouting opinions.
Where does imperfect hearing come into play? Even in Danny's perfect room, two people will hear it differently. Wouldn't the perfect room be one that optimizes the sound to your particular hearing?
No. A system should reproduce sound the way you hear it in real life. If in real life you hear sound with a giant dip in the upper midrange, the system should reproduce it that way, without attempting to compensate.
@@gotham61 I disagree with this take. I have hyper sensitive hearing (especially high frequencies). I don't want everything sounding like real life because it actually can cause insane pain. The point of music is to enjoy it... So I would rather design the system for my hearing and not for some old man that can't hear those same frequencies (correctly/at all). I hear so many small things every day that most of the people miss. I would like to avoid some of those sounds if possible. There's a reason why people like overly bright speakers because they can't hear them like the person next to them. Both should tune the system for their hearing.
What a load of disingenuous, arrogant, self-promoting drivel. Despite all the weasel words about "perception" Danny essentially suggests that where the possibility for a conflict of interest exists, the reviewer inevitably so lacks integrity that they lie in their reviews rather than upset manufacturers. This is an insult to a great many reviewers ( of which I am not one ) and incredibly self-righteous considering that your own channel has a massive conflict of interest in that you are promoting and selling your own kits and upgrades. By your own logic we should not trust you at all.
@@hethaerto1 I'm normally about 85% wrong, but in this case I reckon I am 95% right, the 5% being that I was almost certainly being too kind to Danny, whose channel I enjoy but who jumped the shark big time on this one. 😉
i bought your carnegie acoustics csb-1 speakers modified and they were great! When i moved to a bigger room i had to sell these speakers and the guy that bought these wanted to hear my dynaudio focus speakers but chose the carnegies with their planar tweeter over these.
Danny, have you ever had a dog that, when you came home, had a very guilty look on his face, and then when you walk into the house you find out that he has really made a mess? Well, when you took apart the Harbeth speakers and made your suggestions for improvements I thought that you were that dog. To me you looked like you knew that the changes that you were making were going to upset the balance that that speaker's designer had worked so hard to develop. I would have given you an award for the most guilty CZcamsr if such an award existed. You must know that Harbeth sounds the way that they do partly because of their choice of parts and that selection of parts is intentional because Harbeth is trying to give the consumer that "BBC Sound". So let's not have the bullshit about what you did to that design as being an improvement. It might be an improvement to some people, but I think most owners of that speaker would agree that your changes destroyed the character that they paid for. In this scenario Harbeth and a few other brands are the exception as most of the things that you suggest for the improvement of speakers are real improvements. But watch what you say about integrity, because you are not the white knight that you think you are.
Well said. People like what they like just as Danny likes what he likes. The problem is Danny pretends that his opinion and personal desires are the same things as facts and universal truths. Which, to him, of course, means if only the unwashed morons would listen to his gospel they would understand his brilliance and recognize their inferiority. Honestly, he comes across as someone who suffers from a narcissistic syndrome. He's right, every one else is wrong unless the other person happens to agree with him or designs products that measure the way he thinks they should measure. Plenty of reviewers at least online simply report the characteristics they hear and do not proclaim each new product as the next best thing. It's just something he wants to hear so that's what he hears.
If they customer was happy with them they wouldn't have sent them in, and those that have implemented the upgrade have responded that they are very pleased with the result. I also don't pick what is sent in. I just try to help the customers that do send products in. That one, was really nothing more than a budget level model. There was not much there to begin with.
@@davep2945 yes but we are all a bit like that these days arnt we ? i am no lover of his flat earther remarks with regard to anti cable audiophiles , but as far as lossy cabinet design he did state that "some people like that sound " without being condescending to them .he also sated that they measure quite well but they used far to many parts and that those parts were a bit "cheesy" i have no idea what he has against cheese i love a bit of English cheddar myself, but i supposed i wouldn't put in a crossover
@@dannyrichie9743 totally agree with you Danny.....nobody has to send their speakers to you for analyze them and "suggest" ...because that's what you do...."suggest" the upgrade to bring the speaker to a more balance toward a basic flat response....the tweaks after are then a matter of personal taste and can be achieve with an EQ or DSP ....but the speaker is optimized from a flat response base.....which I believe is correct
Wow, now I am even more envious. I wish I was a hifi reviewer so we could hang out :) But seriously, Danny, if you would give masterclasses to not only those reviewers, but to anyone into hifi, you would probably be fully booked until Christmas. Anyway, good luck and much fun with those reviewers. I hope you have a good time.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I was the budget audiophile and I used to focus on primarily the entry level and the budget side of hifi, as the name would suggest. I feel and believe now that the best most fulfilling experience in this hobby can be had for under a thousand dollars. I sometimes miss doing what I did as a reviewer but I stand by what I did and said and the fact that 99.9% of everything I reviewed was bought with my own money. The best thing to come out of the budget audiophile for me is learning that all we really need in this hobby to truly get the fulfillment and sense of awe we so desperately crave is a Nad c326bee and an old pair of bozak concert grands.
LOl well a slight exaggeration i would guess ,but your right of course in the end hi fi has been infected with the consumer washing iPhone mantra "breaking news you must have the new improved this and that" the fact is that some speakers built 30 years ago sound better than some of the so called modern ones, Not always but mostly, vintage hi fi often did sound better when it was new compared to modern amps etc but all the caps have long since worn out their ESR being a 1/10 of what they were . this is how they get away with selling us new gear built in obsolesce, speakers through last a bit longer and if you renew the crossovers often sound better than anything around to day .
I've booked my flight and I'll be down at the beginning of March.
That's great. I am looking forward to your visit.
@@dannyrichie9743 As am I.
I look eagerly forward to your report!
@@michaeltuohy1249 I'm certain this will be an interesting experience.
Look forward to the outcome. Please do not feel oblige to agreeing with Danny's claims, a fair review will be very much appreciated. Thanks for the effort and trouble.
Danny;
Appreciate the call out. BTW, my last name is DellaSala not DellaRosa 😉 I also live in Florida, not Georgia. You make many valid points but some not so valid ones I hope to give you constructive feedback on without causing any hurt feelings. First, I respect what you do as a loudspeaker engineer. I think you’ve made some fine sounding products from what I’ve personally heard in the past and you’ve been a recipient of a few awards on our website I believe. I completely disagree with your take on cables but that’s OK. We can respectively disagree with each other and still be friends. You seem very likeable and down to earth and I am very flattered that you offered me to stay at your place. I’m dying to try your ribs and hang with you and Ron. I really enjoy Ron’s work as well. His videography is superb, has a great sense of humor and I appreciate his subjective listening reporting he does on products as well as his objective measurements. Class act right there.
I find it a bit troubling that you seem to give CZcamsrs a free pass that magazine reviewers don’t get. First off, I can’t speak for other magazines, only for how I’ve run Audioholics for the past 22+ years. Our reviewers are completely detached from the marketing/advertising side of our publication. I oay them the same for a good or bad review. In fact, I’ve had companies drop advertising bc of an unfavorable review we’ve given them. I always side with our editorial staff unless they’ve made factual errors or misrepresentations of products. That has happened on occasion and we’ve corrected for that. Everyone makes mistakes, myself included, but at the end of the day, we all try to learn from them and move the needle forward.
You claim CZcamsr’s are less corruptible bc they earn revenues based on views. I can tell you that NOBODY is making a living strictly on views unless their channel has 100 million subscribers like Pewdiepie. That just doesn’t exist in our small niche. Reality is a video that gets 50-100k views maybe earns $500. Hardly something anyone can live on. I do like the fact you noticed some CZcamsrs are selling the gear they review. I don’t think that’s an issue as long as it’s disclosed. I know Zreviews does that and has built a very successful business model around it. He isn’t hurting for subscribers and he’s got a huge loyal following. I don’t judge. Personally I don’t want to deal with the logistics of selling and shipping gear but some people don’t mind it. You fail to mention many YT producers lately are doing “sponsored” videos. I’ve heard from several manufacturers of a very popular YT channel won’t even review gear unless there is an affiliate program in place for them to earn commissions. Some claim their views are unchanged despite the company is PAYING them to review their product on their channel. The whole concept of a company PAYING for reviews doesn’t sit well with me at all. I never structure an advertising deal around reviews. I make that clear up front that reviews are kept separate from ad spends. By nature if you’re an advertiser, you will likely be bumped up on the priority list to get your products reviewed. We still review product from companies that don’t advertise but even that has limits. How many reviews should a publication do for a HUGE company like Klipsch when they never spend ad dollars? It’s a win/lose scenario. Win for them since they get FREE press, Lose for us since I have to pay my reviewers for the content. With that said, I still try to work with every manufacturer since the content benefits our readership.
I can’t stress to you how challenging it is to make a living as a professional reviewer that also runs a magazine. I’m not complaining as I love what I do, but you make it sound like we are all driving around in Ferraris wearing driving gloves. That lucrative lifestyle ironically is what many exotic cable vendors enjoy promoting their overpriced snake oil to people with more money than sense that believe in their pseudo babble drivel.
As for reviewers not being “Ready” to review your products, I find that somewhat arrogant presumption on your part. In my case, I built a reference home that has some of the best equipment in the industry (ie. RBH Sound, Perlisten, Revel, Anthem, Storm Audio, Paradigm, etc) and my theater room is professionally acoustically treated by Anthony Grimani. The RT60 decay time in my room hovers around 300msec and I have perfect phase/time response at the MLP in my room using wavelet analysis thanks to the fact I’m running a fully active speaker system with FIR correction. This room is SOTA in every way and that is just one room at my place of many to evaluate equipment. I spent decades studying active speaker approaches and useful EQing to achieve this.
As for experience, I’ve heard hundreds of two-channel and home theater systems at trade shows, dealer shows, personal homes, etc for over 25+ years. Yes I’m friggin old. I’ve also went thru Harman audio training which is an incredibly useful tool that EVERYONE should download ant put themselves through. Sean Olive/Floyd Toole have really opened my eyes to properly controlled listening tests. I know you value listening tests, but I never hear you discuss controlled blind listening tests to eliminate expectation biases which are predominant when comparing small or non-existent differences in audio stimuli, especially when dealing with cables.
Again, I say all of this with great respect as I am a fan of your products/work. But, I hope you can appreciate the struggles of running an AV publication and the challenges reviewers face. The bottom line is we should all be friends and try to respect varying opinions. At the end of the day, we all just want great sound, right? I hope one day to visit you in Texas at your lovely place and hear your fabulous speakers. On the flip side, I invite you to visit my place in Florida for a demo. The Florida Audio Expo is in Tampa next week. Perhaps you can do a demo room there next year and we can all meet up. I hope to meet you and Ron face to face in the near future.
Feeling/respect is mutual Gene! I would love to hang out and learn from you. However, I will not work out with you. Danny already knows, I live my life by the motto “no pain, no pain.”
"As for reviewers not being “Ready” to review your products, I find that somewhat arrogant presumption on your part. In my case, I built a reference home that has some of the best equipment in the industry"
Gene, re-watch the video. He wasn't referring to you or your site at all.
@@Newrecordday2013 ha that's a nice motto. But it's funny I being doing cold plunges a few minutes of uncomfortable makes your life so much better. Also great for immune system. Love your channel.
Awesome reply Gene thank you
@@Newrecordday2013 dude I'm old now so it would be a fairly easy workout with me. 😆 I rarely go to the point of nausea these days...
Sadly, I am not qualified to even listen to speakers. I do not have a dedicated room. I do not have room treatments. I do not have fancy cables. I do not have a perfect source. I do not listen to jazz and classical music. I want my speakers to work for both music and home theater. This is why us “normal” consumers can never truly enjoy the hobby.
This isn't directed to customers. It was directed at reviewers.
16 min mark. Goes off the edge.
"You're not ready" "budget level gear" "young guys". As a 50 year old guy. Wtf is that about.
Get off my lawn.
Maybe it's the method of your message but it comes off as old guy getting butt hurt about something.
If you have ever been critical of audio gear made by other people, how can you say others are not ready to review your gear. You need to rethink that statement.
“We don’t get why everyone is so divisive, we need to get along”
1 minute later…
“Everyone else is wrong and my room is perfect, not sure why people don’t get it.”
that's not how i accessed what he was trying to get over, plus he was talking to reviewers not audiophiles in general he was simply saying that reviewers ought to know what is possible at the extreme high end to make them better reviewers in the budget and mid fi areas, this man is an engineer as i was before i retired, we can some times come over as arrogant but we don't mean to be we just want what ever industry we are in to be the best it can be
I must say I took parts of this video the same way Chris did... There are better ways to say what he did I think. Hard to bridge that divide using the kind of statements he did!
@@robertrollins7983 it's still ridiculous to suggest that the reviewers opinions aren't valid because their listening rooms are not what he has in mind for his products. Who cares? I want to know what Andrew thinks of a set of speakers in HIS room (as is) relative to all the other speakers he has auditioned. It's all relative and gives an indication of how a product performs in a typical modern home (with hardwood floors and no fancy treatment - most of us can't afford that and/or it won't get past our wife).
It's like a bike manufacturer complaining about the type of roads or trails a bike reviewer tests their products on. "Come visit our wind tunnel and we'll teach you about bikes." No thanks, I just want to know how the product performs outside of a lab environment, on the kind of trails that I like to ride on.
@@Monkeyseemonkey79 I could not agree more.
@@Monkeyseemonkey79 I think the point Danny would make here is that if the room sucks, just buy whatever speakers you like the looks and budget of. I've heard really good speakers in bad rooms and they don't sound any better than bad speakers in the same room. I'm sure some reviewers have the ability to hear the differences between good and bad speakers (despite what their reviews seem to indicate) but they just don't have the setup to experience it. What Danny is trying to say is that you need to eliminate outside factors to really appreciate how much better a good speaker is than a bad speaker. Finally, I don't think his intent is to say "my room is better than anyone else's." I think his intent is that his room is the only room he can invite people to, and it's the only room he knows for sure is good.
The only issue with this is that everyone who buys speakers, yours or any other company, does not have the luxury of having a dedicated room to listen in. Knowing that a set of speakers will perform just as well in a common living room as they would in a dedicated sound room is far more appropriate for the average review channel listener. As far as the reviewers setup goes, most of the more reputable reviewers always mention distance from back/side walls, toe in etc and will generally caveate the position relative to a proper listening room.
You had a couple of valid points, but I think in general you've got quite a few people's backs up for no real reason.
This! If GR Research were only selling to buyers who gave a dedicated and dialed in listening room, their business would go under. Their attitude is elitist and delusional. It's not the first time I've seen an engineer requiring a reality check.
yes there are good reviewers darko, Robinson, British audiophile ,audioholics Gutenberg etc but there are many more who are just plain daft( that's brit for dumb)
@@robertrollins7983 British Audiophile is great. A friendly, conscientious & very knowledgeable reviewer who used to work in the industry as an engineer..
@@sdemosi yes i don't always agree with his assessments for example his ATC STA 19 review as i hate the sound of ATC speakers in general finding them too stiff and boxy but they are technically well measured which is confusing as this hobby has always been ( one man's meat is another poison etc )but if you want a decent review which is both technical and emotional with decent comparisons between amps and other speakers there is No-one better, and his pretty likable bloke as well!
@@robertrollins7983 I always think that having an engineering background often doesn’t help. At the end of the day you are just comparing products and it’s about having good evaluative skills to work out which products are better than others, when they clearly are and most would think so. Engineering also takes people off the hunt of consensus improver products as it’s then hard to turn against your own technicalities. It’s about getting reviews across in smart ways to let the reader read between the lines but still promote the product. What troubles me with lots of technical reviews is that it gets used to bamboozle the viewer into thinking that x person knows their stuff, but the problem with that is that the viewer is then more inclined to believe the review on that basis, when some reviewers don’t give downsides and honestly don’t compare or call it out (in a read between the lines way). The people who then like the videos then become a kind of vacuum chamber for that person because they like the person. I always think the review should stand by itself and if a reviewer proclaims they give the product back, well it tells the viewer they aren’t prepared to let the viewer read between the lines.
woww~ So much of this was suited for a behind the scene conversation.
I'm 63. Years back, I had nothing. I had my fathers 1958 zeneth HIFI, hooked up to a car radio, and listened to jazz out of Toronto, across Lake Ontario. Grad school, I still had it. I remember hearing the Chet Baker, Art Pepper, 1956, The Route, 90 miles on the other side of Lake Michegan; never forgot it. I was given a pair a "good" speakers, some Vandersteen 2's, and I hooked them up to a KLH receiver and a $45 cd player. The air was Amazing! Compared to my "previous system", it was. Six months later, the speakers started rattling like lug nuts in a hubcap; they were dry rotted. A stereo shop in town, bought them sight unseen, and in turn, I got into my first tube preamp and amp. After multiple trade-ins and upgrades, I now run monoblock, all tube analog . My Dad was a jazz musician. 80% of our conversations revolved around music. Everytime I turn my system on, I think of him listening with me. Yet, the guy I talk to the most about this, is a coworker, with an L shaped room, running Realistic speakers, a 70's receiver and a crapy TT. He has 40 times the albums I own, and he's happy as a clam, listening to a boombox, because it plays both tape, and cd's. I can talk to him about cables, room treatment, coupling, decoupling, yet when I got him to update to a vintage technics TT, and he heard the difference, that's a win. When I got him monster speaker cables to swap out from thin speaker wires he had, and he heard the difference, that's a win. I gave him little wood wedges to put under his speakers, and he still raves how much cleaner the speakers sound, thats a win. He will never spring for $350 speakers. He'll never let go of that nickle in his hand. He's happy with his stuff, and I'm always questioning.
As to the video, When one says, they'll do the recietal, but you have a Steinway, I only play Busendorpher. There may be some value in that, but depending on the audience, that comes off as the hereichy of arrogance.
Some engineers live only in their hypothetical worlds.
I don't know what Danny or Ron intended with this video, but I know how I received it. That's all I can know, is how I perceive things. I think it was in poor taste and left me with a soured opinion. It felt condescending. I think Danny in particular should probably just stay in his own lane and mind the future and landscape of GR Research(his business). This added nothing positive to anyone in this hobby.
I feel like people like John Darko do a great job about warning viewers about crap like this. He has called out cranky old men on more than one occasion who think that their way is the only way. Darko has better ears and more time to dedicate to listening than I ever will but he always stresses to buy and use what sounds best to you. He gives examples of ways that you might make your system better but always stresses that if you, personally, cannot hear a difference then what is the point? (I know other reviewers have a similar mindset but Darko seems to stress it more than most, I feel like)
@@jacobteeples220 Hard to take a reviewer serious which base his choice of gear on whether it fits in an IKEA bookshelf.
@@mornecoetzee735 Bit of a straw man argument. He may mention it occasionally but it is clearly not his major criteria for judging quality. Having said that you at least made me smile.
@Bob Ahlberg As someone who is relatively new to the hobby myself, I feel like its hard to learn and stay interested when there is so much hostility and elitism in the community, especially among the veterans. Even without all the infighting, its confusing enough when one person is stressing that you need crazy cables that presumably make some appreciable difference or the arguments about specs and numbers or the need to break in new gear. I understand that room correction, speaker placement, bit rate, and even cables make a difference but it is very overwhelming for someone that is new to the scene. The law of diminishing returns is in full force in the audio world and so if I cannot hear the difference between a $100 DAC and one that costs 10x as much, why would I waist the money?
I feel like the best way to attract new audiophiles is to let them listen to the music they love in a way that they have never heard it before - Sit them down in front of a well set up, yet modest system and call out the nuances that are normally glossed over to their attention. Help them understand that what they are hearing is achievable for them too. But if you do that with a system that costs as much as a small house, you are going to make that level of detail seem unattainable and in my experience you end up turning that person off from high end audio.
I feel like a lot of reviewers that are worth their salt try to expose aspiring audiophiles to the possibilities while avoiding conflict within the community and stressing that you should purchase what sounds good to you and not what sounds good to someone with far more critical listening skill and far more money.
(As far as being condescending, I personally find it pretentious that he is deeming anyone who has not listened to his system and uses it as the standard, not worthy of being a reviewer. I also don't like how, at least in my view, he sets himself up as THE authority on all things audio as he is trying to "educate" other reviewers, many of whom have years of experience.)
You come off very patronizing and with little knowledge on how the creator economy works.
You’re calling out creators for their opinions on how audio gear is going to be experienced for average users. That’s their user base, people who’s willing to enjoy audio in their home environments, not people who are investing six figures in a sound treated room solely for listening to music. Telling them they need to “learn” how to properly use their gear and that “they’re not ready to listen to your speakers” comes off as you not understanding their jobs nor their public and you’re just invalidating all their work. There’s no denying you have all the experience to back up your claims, it’s just unnecessary and adds little value to what those creators are doing.
Also, it’s totally unrealistic to assume a CZcams creator can live off just by their Adsense. Receiving products from manufactures, creating a Patreon, doing giveaways and using affiliate links are completely valid ways to monetize your content without risking your reputation or being a sellout just to make money. People go to this creators because they’ve built a strong portfolio and a community that can prove the authenticity of their work. Monetizing your work won’t change that.
We have All this talk about how do we bring the young generation into the hobby. Saying that the young reviewers arent ready regardless of the level of experience they have is arrogant and is what pushes young people away from this hobby.
Amen
Imagine saying you can't review cars until you've judged the pebble beach Concours d'Elegance . There would be no car reviews on CZcams!
This is off-topic, but I have to give a big shout-out to Thomas & Stereo. His attitude is great, his content is great, and his reviews are enlightening.
Thomas has great videos especially when talking about testing stuff with Mr Kanta, Mr vintage etc and all the stuff with valves.
To me, he’s the best, because you’re getting 5+ peoples feedback with very different systems and ears. Thomas & Stereo is an audiophile blessing.
Agreed
Thomas is awesome, but he only seems review luxury gear now.
@@ChiefExecutiveOrbiter that’s not true, he does a variety of everything, and different stuff from other reviewers.
The arrogance in this video is just straight up bizar. Imagine thinking your way is the only way and or even that people want to do it your way. Did you forget that your preference is exactly that, just a preference?! I am keeping well away from this company, a 10 foot pole would be too short. Dear lord what clownery 🤡
To me this video exactly points to why the whole ''audiophile space'' is a terrible place to be. "My system is better than yours and not only that I am one of the few people that knows how to listen to my system and only I can tell that why my system is better than yours. If you either don't like it or can't supposedly hear it than you're not educated enough, Humpf!''
@@Mikipedia so true!
"My standard is THE standard. All of you peasants who don't have the same resources are not worth of hearing MY creation". Sorry but that's how this video resonated to me. I will be unsubbing from here, sadly.
Danny has responded several times and you guys just aren't acknowledging what he said.
He was saying that he observed the younger reviewers need to take room acoustics more seriously because if your acoustics are compromised enough, you will miss hearing some aspects of the gear's performance.
He was saying that is important because of how hard the creators of the gear work to get their product to sound a certain way and those reviewers owe it to the manufacturer to be able to extract and acknowledge what the gear is capable of.
He also owes it to the viewers because despite the fact that the majority of those viewers might never hear those performance characteristics that are only revealed when the room is adequately out of the way, some viewers do care very much and want to know about the complete performance details of the product.
@@tullskull thanks. I'm sure Danny has acknowledged it but it's hard to follow hundreds of comments and responses. I personally feel many reviewers are doing a decent job at covering room acoustics optimization (Darko's video comes to mind as a fairly recent one). Regardless, I think it's naive to think that young people's way into hi-fi includes room modifications as a "must have" as that's the least appealing way to go. You basically pile on more barriers to entry into this already too elitist hobby! Seeing how tech naturally comes to mind as far as convenient solutions are concerned, progress in DSP's and spatial audio understanding will most likely be the preferred solution of younger folks. Disposable income and space being primary issues for them, not sure a "2-channel music room" is something that makes sense for them. Hence the fact that reviewers testing gear in "normal" conditions makes more sense. IMHO.
I think it was Pete Wells, the new York times food reviewer, who was questioned as to his qualifications for reviewing restaurants as he isn't a trained chef. He replied that he has been eating solid food since he was a child. The entire hearing world is fully qualified to share their opinion on an audio product they've heard.
Do you think people should have training before they give you money for your speaker kits? No? I mean it'd be a shame if their untrained ears heard sound from your products.
His complaint is that most reviewers have conflict of interest and use room that is untreated at all.
If reviewer can afford $1000 speaker, $200 bass trap is no big deal right?
I don't hear him any complaint on having untrained ear.
@@MuhammadIrfan-ye5zf Most people buying $1,000 speakers don’t have $200 bass traps. Same as most people with $5,000 TVs don’t have a perfectly dark room.
Muhammad, you are missing the point. Most of us listen to our music in our living room or rec room. Im not about to get ugly bass traps and other crap to make my look like junk just so it sounds a little better.
@@MuhammadIrfan-ye5zf but that is often based on assumption, as where the reviewer films the review, isn't always where they listen.
I’ve enjoyed both of your videos but all this just seems pretty lower-loop. I don’t know if you intended the vid to be much more positive and ‘uniting’ than it had turned out (to me at least), but I urge you to revisit all this.
Just wow. I've heard some elitist butthurt rants before, but daaang.
I take everything on the internet with a grain of salt. When it comes to personal taste, who to judge? We're both music lovers for over 50 years. I have all kinds of speakers throughout the house, ranging from couple hundreds to a few thousand. All my wife listens to is her smart phone. Andrew Robinson hit home run saying something likes "the systems only has to satisfy you and yourself."
"Andrew Robinson hit home run saying something likes "the systems only has to satisfy you and yourself."
Then what value is the review? People can't go to their local audio store and audition gear any more.
So evidently I'm gonna have to buy a new house if i want to enjoy a pair of GR research speakers. 😏 I think designers need to "learn" to design something that doesn't require an anechoic chamber to sound good.
I have to clarify....from my point of view.....A music lover is not the same as an Audio Lover.....A music lover does not necessarily is an Audio Lover but an Audio Lover is a Music Lover as well...No offense.....I hope you understand my point
@@hurkamur1 Guys, it doesn't require any of that to sound good and to enjoy our products. This video was directed to reviewers.
@@dannyrichie9743 whatever your plan was for this video, it seems like you missed the mark.
please explain what makes you the ultimate reviewer or expert? Danny do you have an Audiophile certificate from an acredited school? What if someone doesnt like your speakers? are you going to tell them they are wrong? bottom like is YOU ARE WRONG!... the ultimate reviewers are the end users.... reviewers are just end users as well....
No, the end users are relying to a large degree on the CZcams reviews. As to your questions, I have 30 years of experience doing this. My designs have won pretty much ever industry award, show award, etc. It's time to give back.
@@dannyrichie9743 Yes, we cannot have reviewer complaining "this speaker has muddy bass" - in small room with no sound treatment.
Or my favorite "It sounds bit harsh" - used in living room where back wall is 80% glass window.
If im not going to benefit from the nuances in your speakers you’ve worked so hard to create (as i live in a house, not a sound room), i guess im not ready to spend the money.
This video is addressed to reviewers not consumers. You are very closed minded.
Then why didn’t he just send them a link instead of sharing it with everyone?
@@freone111 no, he clearly thinks that professional audio reviewers are "not ready" or incapable of hearing the nuances in his speakers. That they need to learn, to be taught by him.
This directly speaks to the consumer, because if a pro isn't ready, what hope does the average consumer have?
You also have to believe in the power of speaker cable that is the size of a garden hose.
@@kevinwest1607 held 3 inches from the floor on £1000 set of cable lifts like an elevated train
Danny telling people they can't review audio gear because they don't have the proper room treatment. Afterwards proceeds to sell "tweaked" speaker kits to people that have no room treatments.
Yippie... it's a mad mad world! He's talking to people with deep pockets. Drama in the audio world !
There is a big difference between reviewers and customers, their not the same thing. Reviewers should be able to be trusted. Evidently you have not experienced a decently treated room. The difference is big.
@@rickyblair8802 Not all treated rooms are equal. So it wouldn't make a difference anyways. Many reviewers are listening to gear how the average audiophile would. Some components use an EQ such as DIRAC LIVE which create another variable. Furthermore, to say an audiophile can't interpret a sound signature because their room is not treated exactly like Danny's room is, is just ridiculous.
.....the idea here is to educate people about what they are missing in having bare walls n' floors. You have no idea what your gear is capable of, with all the reflections going on around the room of stray and so late arriving sound waves coming to your ears and standing waves just bouncing around on you. Start with just some sheets, towels and a carpet, then move to some insulation. After how your soundstage opens up and people actually start to seem as if they are in the room with you? You will start investigating into finger foam and such.
@@rickyblair8802 And reviewers should be listening in an environment that would be similar to the use case scenario of a customer; that’s the whole point of a review. To show the average consumer of that product what might be a good fit for them, not what might be a good fit for a dude with an anechoic chamber in his basement.
255k.
(46.6k + 66.9k)x 2=... Not 255k. Maybe Mr Robinson isn't the one needing the lessons here. The big fish in the pond often takes the most shots (and don't give me a "watch the video again, we were praising those guys). Putting out a video that says nice things about someone while insinuating they don't know what they are talking about and need to "come learn" is still a shot. (Obviously, from his comment, Gene took it as a shot).
What do I know though, I'm just the lowly consumer. Something I do know is that I don't want this kind of immaturity in my life right now. Dannie, I unsubscribed from you a while ago. Ron, dude, I liked your stuff before this, but I'm out. 66.9k -1
You are mistaken. Actually calling out any reviewers that this was directed to would not have been cool. So I called out the ones that I like or respected. Gene and I have already had this conversation and he had a personal invite already. He knew it was not a shot. The same goes for Chris. Andrew and I also exchanged emails in the past that were words of encouragement, and I had nothing but good things to say about him. You are inserting your own feelings into this, and they are off base.
I can understand the point to a degree. But the arrogance of Danny will not allow me to watch his channel or consider his products.
If you can only hear the ability of a speaker in a controlled dedicated listening room then it's not a speaker most people will want. And saying most reviewers are "green" is a bit condescending. I do agree that a lot of these "reviewers" lose credibilty by giving almost every piece of equipment a great review.
No, consumers do deserve to know the capabilities of a product being reviewed, and all speakers (or any product) will sound better when set up properly and the effects of the room are minimized.
@@dannyrichie9743 then those people can read stereophile or watch videos from controlled rooms, not these specific reviewers. My guess is that there's not as big of a demand for that, based on the popularity of these reviewers channels.
@@dannyrichie9743 compare the number of subscribers to the stereophile YT channel vs. cheapaudioman. So yes, what you're looking for would be nice, but not what most people care about.
@@bill72pa Stereophile does not have an active CZcams channel. They have not posted a new video in almost a year. They are a print magazine, not a CZcams channel.
@@gotham61 Thanks for proving my point. Most people don't care about sound measurements in a perfectly setup room.
There are many types of reviews. The most successful ones are the emotional reviews of a product. The most accurate ones are the technical reviews of a product. Many of the reviewers fall somewhere in between that. And you can't fault them for having their own format. It's what they do best. And based on view counts and subscription numbers they're probably doing a really good job.
I have been designing systems and acoustics for years. You are completely correct that the room is truly as important as the gear, if not more. That said, you don't need to spend huge bucks to get 90% of the best acoustics. Everything is acoustical since everything absorbs, reflects or diffracts sound. If you understand the physics, you don't need to buy things that say "acoustical" to be acoustical.
But one suggestion is, when you said "I will teach you", it sounds "holier than thou". The best way to teach is to not teach but to show. Yes, comparisons teach more than talking or any you tubeer video. My point is "Holier than thou" pushes people off.
Very well said, and couldn't agree more with you!
Danny has completely exposed the "audiophile" industry as pure fraud. In an industry where reviewers are plied with coke and hookers at audio conventions, of course Danny is "holier than thou", just by default.
The audio enthusiast community is about the most two faced and snobbish hobby community ive ever seen. I come to learn about speakers, amps, wire, etc for the common man. Us common folk don't have 100 grand to dump on home audio! We come to learn the best we can with what we have. The constant degrading and calling out is really disappointing. Like my dad use to tell me as a kid "we may not have the best of everything BUT what WE do have is OURS!" I feel like the audio channels really beat us up st times. Very troubling.
In my late teens and early twenties I worried about what the "experienced" audiophiles thought about gear and what I use. As I gained more and more experience I realized that a good ninety percent of those guys quit learning anything new when they were probably twenty five and just repeated the same tired myths and cliches for the rest of their lives. The few who were truly passionate and interested in the hobby as a whole were rarely snobbish and they love to share the hobby, not preach dogma to newcomers. Once I learned this and the fact that I had heard probably twice as many systems and listened to a vastly wider variety of music, both recorded and live, than almost every self proclaimed snobiophile I'd ever met I quit worrying what they had to say. If I went to Danny's place I'd hear what he hears and I might agree it's great. But I also might find that this is a man with a very peculiar perception of sound from my point of view. In either case it wouldn't bother me to tell him it was great or that I didn't feel moved by it because his opinion of what I should like is completely irrelevant.
The major reviews channels that actually have a significant enough following to matter are more than experienced and knowledgeable enough to give a fair review of Lord Ritchie's products but, alas, this is a privileged only afforded to those who pony up the non refundable tribute or make the self funded pilgrimage to Castle DanRitch.
When reviewers try to tell me I need to buy $200 cables I quickly lose interest. Or that a $900 DAC is great value. Another red flag is if they never talk about actual music, or any new music since 1985.
I agree, the amount of snobiness in the home audio community is staggering. I can hear the pretension oozing out of him in this video. People have to remember that a lot of these people have money and most of them are pushing 50. With money there's always going to be a certain amount of snobiness from some. I mention age only because you have to take everything these guys say with a grain of salt because they don't even hear a portion of the audio spectrum anymore. They don't even know how their amps, speakers or anything else truly sound because they're lucky to hear past 13khz.
So when he goes on about acoustically treated rooms and proper equipment and hearing things properly, well it's all just a bit funny.
@@jeffjefferson7384 You can use a $30 mobile phone to make calls & yet people pay $1200 for an iphone - Why would $900 be too much for a quality DAC?
@@five5x Listening & hearing are different things. Just like looking & seeing. I see a lot of young people content with compressed audio. Are they all deaf ? Look at the number of geniuses who think health comes in a syrringe...
I’m an “audiophile’; whatever that means. High end audio has got to be the biggest snake oil sector that there is in any industry. It’s all about MONEY. No one, and I mean no one, is going to say that their four thousand dollar coat hanger interconnects sound like sh1t.
Exactly
Interesting, so you think your customers have equal rooms as your testing lab? I would think most people don't. They have no room treatments, are not in a position to place the speakers way in the room. So, a review more geared to the general customers isn't a bad thing. You can still do a comparison in less than optimal rooms. It will still give an idea of what to expect from a product. I guess people that want to extract the maximum out of their system will do more research then just watch a review channel.
So I don't know if this whole dustup is legit or what. I subscribe to many audio info-related channels and see several of them are getting mileage out of the GR callout video, which is admittedly entertaining. I think for me GR will lack the credibility to make such a "call out" video until they subject their products to the same scrutiny that every other manufacturer does. When you make a living tearing down and selling fixes to measured speaker responses (measurements aren't everything) and then won't make your product available to the same scrutiny it just smells bad. And To say that other reviewers aren't ready to listen to your products seems rather convenient for the guy selling that product. My two cents.
Ah, our products have been reviewed by every magazine online and in print and won industry awards from all of them.
Agree. I've seen Danny online and I've looked over some of the his crazy antics like turning a piece of wire as an antenna to prove a point. With this, I've lost interest in him, his work and by extension New Record Day. This kind of toxic reporting only serves to destroy the audio community. He's become the same as ASR, and those guys have nothing but ridicule for him. If he honestly wants to change things, this is not the way. Out. P.S. GR Research is a manufacturer/seller. Using his logic, I shouldnt trust him. Fine, point accepted.
@@dannyrichie9743 Didn't you start your rant by describing how inherently sketchy magazine reviews are? You can't have it both ways, Danny.
@@johnadair6108 ...how long have you been reading HiFi review mags? Really? You can't see it?-)
Totally agree. Danny uses the excuse that reviewers "aren't ready", so that he doesn't have to subject his designs to outside scrutiny. There are plenty of very experienced reviewers out there who are more than capable of a proper evaluation. But Danny wants them to come to his place so he can "teach" them. At one point I had an interest in buying GR speakers as I have built electronics and cabinets before. But I've found it very difficult to find anyone but Danny's friends to give reviews on his products. You'll see some positive reviews on various blogs, but you don't know who they are or what their tastes are compared to yours. And the fact that Danny "improves" the designs of speakers from major and respected manufacturers strikes me as the ultimate in arrogance. He leads you to believe the he is the best speaker designer out there. Upgrading parts, yes. That's easy though, as the manufacturer used cheaper parts to hit the necessary price point. So of course, spending another couple hundred dollars on upgrades will improve it! Redesigning crossovers to improve on an Andrew Jones design? I don't think so. And what Danny's background? Try finding that out.
Yes, the general audience is older which means we are very well aware of how audio magazines make their money. Of course, some online reviewers make a portion of their money in a very similar manner. So we don't need the lecture as if you're revealing a deeply held secret. I will agree that magazine reviewers more so than online reviewers have greater pressure on them to be positive but I've read many reviews in which it was clear the writer was less than thrilled with the product. As for online reviewers, very few of them act as if everything is the next greatest thing ever. Guttenberg and Sean at Zero Fidelity have both said if a product is bad they just don't do the review. So naturally the products they do review are going to viewed in a more positive light because they made the review cut in the first place. How many other channels have the same policy but don't reveal it, I have no idea. Let's not forget that you make judgements about products without listening to them and criticize them simply because they don't measure they way you think they should. I know, I know, you're the audio Zeuss that we should all bow down to as your perception of sound is the only correct viewpoint on the subject but that's, well, merely your opinion. And you're opinion is worth exactly what I paid for it just like mine is worth what you paid.
Look, if I were to ever find myself out in the boonies near Wichita Falls and I were to stop in for a listen I might very well find your system to be the greatest in history. But that's in your room so it's likely irrelevant in my home as I may not have the space or the funds to execute it in the same manner you have in your dedicated space. And the overwhelming majority of audiophiles don't have the space or the funds either. On the other hand I might find your system to be lacking in some way in which case I would be courteous, say it was nice, and move on to something I preferred more. The issue I have is that you seem totally convinced that there is no way anyone could ever hope to experience something better than what your system produces. That's more than a bit arrogant and bordering on narcissistic. Over the years I've heard many a supposedly spectacular "audiophile systems" that the owner was so very proud of because it did one particular thing extremely well, like imaging or sound stage depth. They were so enamored with these particular traits that they were blissfully ignorant to the fact that other aspects of the system, such as dynamics, extension, detail or tone was painfully lacking. Maybe you're one of these guys and maybe you're not. Who knows?
You have a certain way you like things to sound and that's fine but it's not the official, written on stone tablets from God in heaven, way that reproduced sound should sound. In the end we may agree that the way you like things to sound is the same way I like things to sound and that you've hit the mark. Or we may find that you and I have very different ideas about how sound should be reproduced. The difference is I would allow you your opinion because that's all it is while you would not accept, intellectually at least, that I have a right to feel the way I do and that we're both correct because sound is a subjective subject. Instead, you sit here on this video pretending that reviewers shouldn't get samples of your products because they are tone deaf buffoons that need to be taught how to hear your products. That's like a guy claiming he makes the best fried chicken in the world but before folks can taste it they must attend a two week fried chicken tasting camp in order to understand that when you taste his fried chicken you are tasting the best.
Hey, put yourself out there if you're so confident in your gear and let the chips fall where they may. You try and cover your arrogance and condescension for anything not beholden to the Danny way of seeing things with a soft spoken, aw shucks, I'm just trying to help way of speaking. However, anyone who is paying attention and can think for themselves sees a man who needs to either take a step down off his DIY pedestal (which I'm sure is better than anyone else's pedestal) or who needs to put his money where his mouth is and send his products out for review. If they are as good as you claim then what is there to worry about? I know user error is the cause for a good many negative reviews regarding any product but high end audio reviewers aren't usually that foolish. Besides, you can send your products to people you agree with. But to suggest that the only way people should ever judge your equipment is in your home, not theirs, with your associated equipment, not theirs, and with your sound treatment, not theirs is ridiculous. News flash, unless you want reviewers and the general public to come live with you then your speakers must work well in their spaces.
Very well said sir.....I feel the need to stand up and slow clap after reading your post but I'm in bed and I'm positive my wife would believe I'm sleep walking. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to post ads for all of my entry level gear because clearly I'm not ready 🙄
WOW, I think your being a bit hard on poor old Danny , he has won a few prizes at audio shows for the sound of his systems , Whist i agree with your points about "some professional arrogance " having watched the bloke (that's British for GUY lol) he seems to me to be pretty dedicated and an all round person that is better in this world than the next , i dont think he meant that for one minute , i think he was just saying that new reviewers ought to know what is possible at the extreme HI end in order to see /hear what is close to it at the budget & mid fi level which would make them much more discerning reviewers .for example JOHN Darko made a video in which he stated that "Sorry high end audio is dead " this coming from a supposed hi fi reviewer is just bloody daft and he ought to be ashamed of himself, because if that the case and we are only going to be left with vinyl at best and downloads at worse like MQA which to me is lossy crap then why bother at all seems to me he either shot himself in the foot , or wants to destroy the hi fi industry ?
Manufacturers who have total confidence in the quality of their products don't have to go around trying to cherry pick their reviews. They also don't make wildly inaccurate over-generalizations of how the review process actually works in practice. Ron, you've made a very serious error of judgement in getting involved in this absurd and frankly ludicrous video of quite staggering arrogance.
Agreed. This is a trainwreck.
While I can agree with what has been mentioned about magazine reviewers selling gear and paid reviews on magazines (print and digital) - I must also mention that probably not all audio enthusiasts (I'll avoid the term audiophile) have either the space or means for ideal speaker placement and/or room treatment. For such audio enthusiasts (yours truly included) - it is equally important how gear sounds in less than ideal environments. I've had the good fortune of listening to high end gear in ideal setups (at dealers). But there are people like me who cannot buy/rent an apartment because the speakers need to be setup in a particular way and the room treated. We have to make do with what we have which is maybe our den or our living room. So we need to rely on those reviewers who have setups like ours and provide their opinion based on those same setups.
....it is sad man, one needs some basic set of room treatment to follow them around. To that they add a room and then gear to listen to. You have it all backwards in your understanding of high fidelity. Not to say one can't just be enjoying the music in their head, or say some Bluetooth speaker amping up your phone's signal.
"Acoustic Fields" needs to be part of this conversation!
The blackboard would be filled with stuff
Narcissism at its finest.. 👎
🤦🏻♂️
Regardless of the youtube drama, I think it is very generous of Danny to open his listening room to anyone interested. I would love the opportunity!
I think it is a little arrogant to state that "some youtubers are not ready". Manufacturers will always send their equipment to youtubers that have a tendency to prefer the manufacturers sound. That is why a lot of youtubers often review multiple products from one manufacturer or group. I'm not so sure if that is a bad thing, it is just the way it is.
If I would work at the Harbeth marketing department I would never send my speakers over to a youtuber that bangs on about how great Paradigm or Revel speakers are and likes analytical sounding speakers. Nothing wrong with Paradigm or Revel, but it is not the audience who appriciates a BBC style sound. So it would be a stupid choice to put in any effort knowing the outcome will be negative.
If a youtuber is in some kind a way working with advertisements, receives the equipment from a distributor or manufacturer, then true objectivity is gone.
The only way to work around this, is that the audience pays directly to the youtuber for doing the testing, this way the youtuber has a budget to buy the equipment that is requested by the audience itself. imagine a youtuber with 100.000 subscribers is able to get 20.000 of them to pay 50 cents a month (which is hardly anything for an individual compared to the Spotify, Tidal, HBO and Netflix contracts they already have). He would have 10.000 Dollars (Euros, Russian Roebels or Djiboutian Franks if you like) to get new hifi gear and sell reviewed gear.
The only thing to change the hifi industry is people willing to pay directly to a reviewer and thus preventing him or her to fall in the big marketing traps. That is how we need to change our system.
If you want something honest and good, wether its products or reviews, you need to pay for it. Stop buying the big magazines filled with advertisements and instead pick a few of your favorite youtubers and donate some small amounts of money so they can give you an objective view in this overwelming, big multinational marketing machine that is controlling your perception of what is good and not.
Channel must have topped out and needed something to get it moving again. Adding the top reviewers on CZcams, to the thumbnail, This is ClickBait.
Your initial instinct to ask a second opinion for this video was good. Unfortunate that it ended up getting published.
I am baffled that both of you thought this was a good video to make. Maybe you mean well but the angle and delivery of the message is a complete disaster.
This comes from a man who uses a warehouse for a sound chamber to test his upgrades.
Dude you hit the nail on the head, Danny is starting to walk outside his shoes lately. Dude does great work on crossovers what not.
His cable videos are a absolute joke from a technical and even biased view. Yuck..hate this, love the channel just not how he is pretending to be special
.....show's how you don't understand what it is your seeing in the video your watching and measurements, or how the guy goes about it. Your speaking out of ignorance:-)
What is the point of an unprovoked passive aggressive cheap shot attack?
How is it a cheap shot? Does he have a valid point or not.
This is the audiophile equivalent of "git gud scrub". But the fact is that many of these channels are popular because they're reviewing gear in real world situations for real world budgets. I never considered myself an "audiophile". I just want something that doesn't suck, and I don't want to spend the equivalent amount of money as a decent automobile. Those are 2 separate priorities for me and on entirely different levels.
I'm not an 'audiophile' (as used in the marketing media).
I am a recording engineer, working in my field for almost twenty years. My living depends on what happens between the sound waves hitting a microphone and the sound waves hitting the listener's ear. Nothing more.
There are also people in my industry who make a lot of money talking about the technical aspects of sound in flowery, worn out thesaurus language, and if they had to do what I do for a living they would starve to death. There are people like this in every industry.
Thank you, Danny, for your honesty, truthfulness and courage on saying what needs to be said. You've sold me, not only on you as a man, but on the sincerity of your product, as well.
As for the others? Get out your drawing boards, table saws and solder irons and let's see what you've got.
I can wait.
I used to review PC hardware online. I had simple rules for a fair evaluation. One, benchmarks matter most when there is a limitation found, not a new high score. Two, testing in a perfect setup should only be used to show the claimed performance is achievable. Three, place the review item into a standard environment, install the software, set up the hardware, talk to the balance and user experience in a real-world setting.
I watched NRD & GR for teardown insights, but always found them both more then a little annoying & theatrical, this dumpster fire train wreck is truly a dream.... 😂
Did you see the NRD video he back tracks on a middling review of Buchardt speakers? He acknowledges how every other reviewer praised the speakers, then says he discovered his speaker stands were bad and after changing them "Realized" the Buchardts are now great speakers. Total liar.
@@conchobar No, I couldn't stand him from day one and only watched his teardowns on mute, but he did review some small diameter driver speakers which I was interested in which no one else reviewed, but he's unbearable really. You get the feeling that he thinks people can't get enough of staring at the back of his head or his face. His talk is just not as absorbing as any of the other audiophile you tubers, personally my favorite is "Stereo Review X". 😊
I cannot stand NRD
It like listening to these two is like listening to Ben Stein talk while the other person is scraping their nails across a chalkboard.
@@54tristin He praised the Lounge phono stage that copped a bad review by HiViNYWS
🤣 my negative comment seems to have been deleted! So much for honestly and transparency. Oh man you just proved my point. That is hilarious actually.
I didn't delete them. Typically I delete only profanity or personal attacks.
Someone definitely did.
what makes you the ultimate expert Danny? the real experts are the end users... you did wrong bigtime
@@SantanKGhey1234 So the experts aren't the people that develop the product? The experts are the people that buy them? If that were true then the wrong people would be designing the products.
@@dannyrichie9743 you're wrong again... the experts are the end users... as a successful designer or manufacturer, you take feedback and considerations from the end users who actually use products in real world situations... an anechoic chamber is not a real world situation... Nobody listens to music in a perfect room, there is no given certified given standard anywhere.... so you are very wrong
this video comes across as self-aggrandizing and delusional. Unless that was the goal, I'd delete and try a different approach.
Gilbert: 100% wrong.
The dirty little secret that wasn't brought up in the video, and which is a major questionable source of income for some CZcams reviewers, is sponsored links. For many reviewers, this is actually their primary source of income, and is much more lucrative than the CZcams partner payouts.
How can a review be objective, when the reviewer is getting paid every time someone clicks on the link in their video to buy the product being reviewed? Talk about paid reviews!
I know that some CZcams reviewers won't use sponsored links, because they feel it corrupts the process. Steve Guttenberg and Chris at Vinyl Attack are two of them. But most of the reviewers that Danny cites as his favorites for their "professionalism" use sponsored links, Andrew Robinson does, Gene DellaSalla at Audioholics does, and most pertinent to this video, Ron at New Record Day does.
It seems it's kind of rich to hear these people professing their honesty, while calling out other reviewers for being "corrupted."
I don't have a problem with a reviewer using sponsored links. My point was to warn the "new guard" that if they create the perception of being paid off for reviews that it will hurt their credibility.
Pop on, the very reason I unsubscribed from Andrew Robinson quite a
while ago, the mention of the products full title with every breath it got
embarrassing to watch. To me I was watching a paid promotion every
time so I quit as I have done with a couple of others.
Texas has the , "I am the best" attitude in general. No surprise you have the , "I'm the Sherif in town" , condescending view of things.
I bought my Audiolab amp cos of your friend Andrew Robinson. Glad you mentioned him. Thumbs up!
YOU said "within your budget." MY budget doesn't include a "listening room" or a bunch of "room treatments." My budget includes my current surroundings, which is all that I can afford at this time in my life. I don't want to, or can justify the expense, of going down the rabbit hole to keep chasing the perfect sound, because I don't think it really exists. If I'm happy with my 2 current systems, that's all that really matters to me, and I couldn't care less what anyone else might think about it.
My biggest disappointment with this dumpster fire is Ron’s lapse of judgement in allowing himself to be part and parcel of this mess. If Danny wants to parade once again his condescending attitude and closed-minded approach to audio, that’s his prerogative. But for Ron to let himself be pulled into this, and -- like it or not - to share guilt by association, damages his reputation significantly. It appears this Texas cabal of reviewers has an Alamo mentality. They might think they’re making an heroic last stand, but at the end of the day, they won’t be standing.
"closed-minded" What, you can't handle the truth? Too many "reviewers" don't know as much as they believe they do, period. Most don't have the proper room acoustics or equipment to test and quite frankly don't have the knowledge of what they're blabbering about.
As far as magazine reviews, Danny is spot on the money- the advertisers are paying their salaries, THAT'S A FACT.
Then there are the youtube "comparators" who shoot a video of two different products and someone is supposed to hear the difference in a room that has unknown acoustics, questionable mics, compressed audio tracks, played on a PC with crap audio. Oh, that's pure genius.
For 50+ years an audio enthusiast and sold Audio equipment, I found Danny's statements factual. Will many people be able to hear the improvements he makes? NO, and he explains why they won't.
Chill snowflake, try listening more and babbling less.
@phantasm1004 Kiss off, genius.
@@HumanAction1 had to look it up online but Tekton really don't come out too well, the owner sounds abit borderline.
Wes, You missed the point...
@@HumanAction1 Its the opposite, the owner of tekton is a drama queen as he didnt like the review ron gave him so he started crying like a lil biatch. LOL
Danny - Having watched your videos for years I know the importance you place on integrity, quality, and transparency. Your love for products, the industry, and
engaging new generations is apparent. I thank you for your efforts, passion, and honesty.
As a former tech reviewer myself, I certainly agree with many of your perspectives, though I certainly take more issue with the practices of those on CZcams than you do. Even so, just because one can say something doesn’t always mean they should. Had your comments been tempered with more care and more grace, they might have been received by both those within and without the CZcams community much better and more readily.
I hope you’ll take the time to watch your video again, see how some of the comments might be received by others, and make a follow up video clearing up any miscommunications and extending again what was a genuine offer on your part to share your wealth of knowledge with others. Thanks for all you do!
Thank you for that good feedback.
I'm glad I only watched 8 minutes of this. Like most people say, they having a room that they live in & not a the luxury of a treated room, but basically, the vast majority of gear out there is decent at their respective price points. I have a 35K value system that I love, but I'm equally happy hearing a great song on a crappy radio that has zero hi-fi quality.
Measurements for consumers are are really not important, unless your trying to correct something, if you see an FR chart for a speaker and it looks poor but you like the sound of the speaker in person, what do you do? what becomes more important at this moment in time?, the graph you see with your eyes or the sound you're hearing with your ears? I've been in the headphone game a long time, many many years ago I used to try and judge a headphone using it's FR chart, and because of that I ended up avoiding quite a few headphones that I later came to regret as when I auditioned some of them loved what I was hearing, listen first, and then if you feel something is off look at the FR graph and see if it corelates with your ears, there are a lot of psychoacoustic minefields when it comes to sound/audio, even looking at a FR chart before you listen to a speaker will effect how you perceive the sound.
I don't think it's right that Danny calls out 'bedroom' reviewers that don't have an optimum environment in which the speakers are being auditioned, lets be honest here, 99% of people are not going to have room treatment, he says he watches some of the reviews online and to quote Danny, "You don't come across as audiophiles, you're not there yet, your reviewing budget level gear" , first of all you can ignore that sentiment straightaway, it's this type of antiquated pompous attitude that put's people off this hobby, there is no budget for being a 'audiophile', all that is required is being enthusiastic about equipment for playing recorded sound, and it's quality, that's it.
Also, he states "your doing a review of some product in a bedroom, you got a bed over here on one side of the room, you got speakers up against the wall, there's a big blank empty wall in the middle of speakers", we have to be honest here, a large majority of speakers end up in non ideal environments,, probably 99% of them, bedrooms, sparse lounges, on shelves etc, now yes, it's not a bad thing to try to at least optimise the positioning of your speakers, maybe throw a rug down, the basics essentially, but not many people will go beyond that due to it's inherent impracticability, so it's not always a good thing to judge a speaker with in-room measurements in an optimum setting and then imagine your going to hear the same once it's in your house!, sometimes I value the opinion from a 'bedroom' reviewer more because because of this, it's a regular guy/gal, talking about a speaker in a 'regular' environment, and that's relatable.
Consider this, He says you can't really trust these reviewers based on their less than optimal environments/equipment, but does he really know the danger of trusting speaker reviews and measurements done in a studio or optimised listening room?, you then fall into a potentially worse trap which many people do at their local hi-fi store, we all know what's it like to hear a speaker in a local stores listening room and be wowed, only to get it home and feel disappointed, I actually think more speakers should be tested and reviewed in 'normal' environments, because ultimately that's the sound we're going to hear.
Personally think these 'bedroom reviewers' are doing a great job, and most importantly they are getting people into Hi-Fi, it wasn't so long ago we thought traditional Hi-FI was dying out, but these guys are introducing a new younger generation into this amazing hobby and that can only be a good thing.
Please guys, remember GR Research isn't a charity, it's a business.
There's a lack of discussion on source material in most of these threads. I listen to a a wide variety of music and the recording quality is so broad that you can't really establish the quality of the system or are we supposed to only listen to tracks that the audio world thinks are of high quality? I only have three recordings I use to make sure all is OK on the system and sometimes I have to go to them after listening to good music but bad production just to make sure it's not the "system" that has gone bad. Does Danny have tracks he recommends both on vinyl, CD and streaming? What does he listen for on those recordings? That might help us evaluate systems. We can't all have acoustically designed rooms and so it's important to know what makes a decent system for an average living space. Andrew Robinson does seem to do this when you see the room he positions his equipment in.
i mentioned source material in another post on here so what are you talking Willis
This was a pleasure to watch, I always enjoy watching your videos and I appreciate your guidance and candor. Thank you.
While I understand what you are saying, understand that 99% of your videos are, these other speakers are junk and "mine" are not.
Nice marketing ploy for your channel and brand image!
Interesting video. Haven't watched all of this video yet, however one thing that stands out in a negative way is your definition of "audiophile". Saying that someone is not an audiophile because they're only reviewing budget level gear is the kind of the elitist crap that demonstrates everything wrong with the audio industry. Danny you should know better. Most of us don't have treated rooms. Most of us can't afford to drop $5K, little own $30K ( that's a car ) on a preamp, an integrated amp, or speakers.
I would argue that the true audiophiles in the industry are the ones who are actively wanting to open up, and change the landscape of the audio industry, to make it more accessible to the lower budget crowd, like me. Getting more people into audio is good for everybody, and the more people out there who understand that you don't need to sell your car to fund a nice 2 channel audio system, the better. My desktop system consists of a topping D50s dac, a burson funk amp, & KEF LS50 Meta's. Including cables this is a $3.5K system. Yeah, it's no doubt considered budget by individuals who own an integrated that alone costs more than my entire system, but so what? I LOVE my setup. It sounds fantastic, considering it isn't setup in it's own room ( shock horror ).
Do I hope to transition to a proper room that will give me the opportunity to treat it for sound? Absolutely. In the meantime, due to my current living configuration, this is all I can do. I'm sure there's others in the same boat. Lastly, we need more YT reviewers talking about budget gear. My biggest frustration is watching a video reviewing a set of passives, only to find out at the end that the amp they used is $10K, & a DAC thats $4K. No thanks. I value my finances, and my marriage.
There's already a lot of discussion about this, but frankly I can totally relate to what has been said. Though you might have better created two separate videos. One that calls out the reviewers to come and take a listen, and a separate one to talk about reviewer ethics.
I'm in HIFI since 1970 and I had one basic rule: Buy only stuff that I could listen to for several days . Have to admit sometimes the choice was not very big depending on where I was working(in over 20 countries) and sometimes the choice was overwhelming. But my basic rule never let me down.
Just HV to comment that except for personal audio maybe including even that the market for audiophiles is no longer mainstream. Maybe what's really urgent is bringing more people to appreciate sound quality and have more people, younger people including women into the hobby. Bringing it to the mainstream again would be the best thing that could happen to the industry and that could maybe even make YT enough money to rely on the review aspect and buy all their review samples to minimize perception of bias. Cheers and Happy Listening to everyone. Hoping that everyone in the audiophile community could work on that.
The true innovation/challenge is to make a speaker/system that sounds great in any environment with a low accessible consumer price range. That is were the future lies, dont you think?
Like a supercar thats fast, light, luxurious, spacious and smooth over bumps?
DSP is here in the present, but the mere mention of DSP to this crowd is heresy.
Pretty outrageous to talk about others "not being ready" when you're talking about audible differences between speaker cables...
If a reviewer can't easily hear differences in cables then they absolutely are not ready to be doing reviews of high end gear.
@@dannyrichie9743 Enjoy your pseudoscience. Do you believe in god too?
@@mrebear9758 Yes, I believe he created us in his image and we are not descendants of apes.
@@dannyrichie9743 hope you are joking as you well know thats not how evolution works.
then why are you not using the cheapest smallest gauge bare wire on your set up? i mean if theres no diff right?
I follow a choice select few of reviewers such as Thomas Stereo, John Darko, Terry from POPS and Tarun from A British Audiophile. They seem the most genuine to me and more importantly knowledgeable. This was an interesting video and you made some interesting points.
Some things never change. Having over 25 years in the industry as a retailer, these issues are as true today as they were in the 80's and 90's. Reviews and advertising dollars, livingroom vs listening room (wife vs husband), engineers vs listeners. Hobbyist vs audio nut case. Same issues today in the car detailing world.
@@rocketmail125
You're absolutely correct Darrin. When I think back, it was the ipod, and small satellite/ sub systems (ceiling speakers), were the beginning of the end of serious listening by in large.
@@rocketmail125 That is very insightful , you nailed it.
Bottom line is invitations presented in public rather than private turns the invitation into a provocation to called out reviewers. This suggests the called-out reviewers are not credentialed enough and need more training; thus, these reviewers will suffer credibility whether they accept or reject the invitation. This would upset me if I was a credentialed reviewer.
I tend to feel if the reviewer cant accept it in the light that it was clearly offered, perhaps that credential is not worth as much as you might think.
I have to agree with Charles here. I like the GR Research videos in general. But he took at shot at reviewers. I mean look at the Title: (IN CAPITAL LETTERS). ‘CALLING OUT the REVIEWERS!’ This was pissing on the bushes.
@@jamesmalee822 JFC he says in the notes he LIKES these reviewers!
@@veroman007 his comments are left handed.
Very clever Danny! But I can see what you are doing, nice angle for click bait, faux dramatic concern for snake-oil reviewers you quite rightly infer that are paid by the manufacturer to hype that brand whilst using the same technique to sell your own snake oil cable’s directly. And the audiophile comments? I cannot stand that word and the way it’s banded about, as though you are of a higher calling , more worthy etc. You use clever manipulation and word play to carefully build a case and a reversed engineered narrative to suggest that your claims for your product can’t be possibly be challenged as the reviewers are simply not Audiophile enough! Well played Danny, but some of us can see through you, likeable as you are! 🤗
And why is that you stress that you listen to your cables to hear the difference instead of objectively measuring the performance but on speakers (for your upgrade kits) do the complete opposite? Who cares how the speakers measure if they sound good in your room . Again your sales pitch reversed engineered to fit your agenda for the product you want to move. I watched your Linton review the other night , the 3 way old school design speaker and you were seriously suggesting that somebody pay 700 dollars (I think) for your upgrade, nearly as much as the speaker itself. Completely insane, they would better of Just buying a more expensive speaker that they can audition/listen to in the first place as opposed to a total outlay that YOU are telling them (As the self proclaimed Audiophile) sounds better.
Danny is full of it. Danny just has a bit more knowledge then some folks but he knows that if Amir tests his spekars mods the changes will either be miniscule or ruin the sound. I saw him try and tell people to change the whole sound of a British speaker...it was awful. I also get sick of him selling his extras ..the cabinet paper, the speaker couplers ( or whatever he calls them) and of course the cables. It's a good scam. I am never watching him again.
After over 35 years of being into audio this is my response.
Reviewers are simply expressing an opinion. Read, listen to and watch sufficient reviews and get to know which reviewers opinions ring true with you, and which reviews are influenced by ‘sweeteners’.
As regards Danny - whilst I appreciate that speaker manufacturers build speakers to a specific budget, which may force them to compromise on the quality in some areas. I also appreciate that Danny could design kits that could potentially improve a speaker, all I ever hear from him is measurements, measurements, measurements. The biggest lesson and most important lesson I’ve learned is that measurements and specifications should only be used as very general guidelines. Purchasing decisions should be influenced by 2 things, your wallet and your ears.
If I have £3000 to spend on a pair of speakers, I would not spend £3000 on a pair of speakers I was not entirely happy with and then spend £800 on a kit to potentially improve them. I would take the £3800 and purchase a pair of stock speakers that satisfied my listening preference.
The thing is, as much as I despise this video, and as much as it has put me off watching any of his future videos, his logic is sound, crossover quality matters and in reality if you spent the $3000 on speakers as you mentioned, then purchased the improved parts kit you might actually end up with something that is worth more like 4500+++
I can say that from my experience with building 5/6 pairs of diy speakers. You’re right though, reviewers are completely entitled to their opinion and I don’t believe they need perfect rooms. After all, most of us watch reviews purely as entertainment already having a system we are happy with.
I think this video was all about wanting to be some sort of top dog, making claim to having the best system in the country. Which I highly doubt. If all these reviewers come away from hearing his system and singing it’s praises on CZcams he will get huge business traffic. Period. If he truely just wanted to help, it should have been via private invite in a humble manner allowing the invitees to decline or accept in private. This might then have resulted in the desired effect down the line.
He delivers good information which I appreciate, but at the end of the day, you have to like the persona delivering the information and this video has spoilt my appreciation of the content. It’s a shame.
@@Mark-mj6qp yes, but you would also invalidate any manufacturer’s guarantee!
Drama, passion, anger, joy, mine is bigger than yours, what would be the next episode? This is a Mexican telenovela!.... l am afraid the message of this video did not pass well. It causes division : (
If i am unwilling or unable to place my speakers at the best sounding locations in my room or to have any room treatments will i hear the advantages of GR modded speakers? I think that question is the basis for becoming an audiophile in the real sense. You have to be willing to buy excellent equipment and have the willingness and dollars to take it to the next step. I am a closet audiophile unable or unwilling to go that extra mile to join the club.
i think it comes down to the defnition of "audiophile". For me its simply someone who cares about the way music sounds and that can manifest itself into a wide spectrum of levels and degrees, none being better or more correct. One is no more or no less an audiophile if you dont prescribe to someone elses laundry list of requirements .
I am pretty much where you are at and I think that the answer to your question about getting the benefit out of better gear is dependent on what you have for a room. Danny is saying that a well designed speaker will sound better in general, but environment is a big factor in getting all of the benefits of the design. For instance, if you are trying to enjoy some music that has certain softer elements that you really like, you will tune into those moments in the music. If your listening room windows are open and someone is running a lawn mower directly outside of them, you will promptly close the windows to improve the sound in the room. You just applied sound treatment. You improved room acoustics by damping external intruding sound. As we become aware of the different levels of treatment that we can perform, we may find ourselves willing to make some changes in order to get noticeably better sound. Moving speakers seems to be a fairly simple change. Why not try different locations and see if it makes a significant difference?
What may be useful to hear from Danny would be a simple tutorial on the three or four most basic things that can be done to the listening environment to get the most out of a pair of speakers without making major changes to the environment.
You needed some treatments to hear the real sound of all equipment
I love Danny’s videos , I’m a Data driven individual, as a cyclist I rely on my bike computer to provide me numbers , watts , cadence heart rate , nice to see graphs showing how a speaker is performing, most that I’ve seen are poor , but I’ve listened to speakers that Danny’s has measured and response are all over the place , but to my ears they sound amazing, and have bought them . Trust your ears 👂, Danny , keep the videos coming buddy 👍
I dont know if I really agree. I installed, designed and sold car audio for a few years. I tried to focus on HQL no SPL (those were things in the 90's). Cars are all shaped different. You can spend crazy money treating the car to make it ideal, but really, the speakers should work TO the car, and not the car TO the speakers. There was NEVER a single combination of receivers + amps + speakers that produced amazing results in all cars. THere were often the wonkiest combos that created the most amazing sound stages and sonic balance. When people came in and asked "what should I get?" I actually had to give them an answer. I couldnt just say "you arent ready". I couldnt say "there is no perfect system". We built the system with the budget they had in mind, and the car they provided, and in the end, you fixed the bad things with sound processing ie. eq, xovers, and dsp. For the most part, every customer was happy because it was a step up from the factory stereo, even if it wasnt anywhere near ideal.
Everyone that has ears is qualified to have an opinion. Im so sick of some idea of a reference. Your reference is what you accepted as such. If you like a crap ton of bass and scooped mids, then that perfectly okay. Half my customers just wanted a crap ton of subwoofers and a high power dirty amp (because clean doesnt matter for low frequencies). I didnt tell them how much there reference sucked. I gave them what they wanted and they enjoyed the hell out of it.
Home theater doesnt need uncolored speakers. Honestly HiFi audio doesnt either, unless you have some odd sense that every album has ideal engineering; cause they dont. What I want in a review is just facts like: the speaker farts out at this frequency, or the high end makes your ear drums bleed on cymbal heavy music, or the snare and kick sound real to life, etc. I dont want a stupid chart. Give me 3 albums, one over engineered, one raw, and one just average and tell me how all three sounded. Done ranting.
You do realize Ron from New Record Day did a paid review for Tekton. He also gets free gear and resales it for income. He admits this. I think he reviews your products as well even though you guys are friends.
Hey @Sean B, I have been very open about the one paid review I have done while running NRD, let's NOT pretend that its some kind of a secret waiting to get out. Second, yes, I have been given some free products over the 8 years of doing this and in those cases, I have either given those products away or in some cases, sold them. What I HAVE NOT done is arrange or barter gear in exchange for a review which is the example given in this video. Let's make sure we being fair and honest in these comments and examples, cool?
@@Newrecordday2013 And you review your friend Danny Ritchie’s products. Do you want to address that? If you see my comments I am stating facts but I am not creating narratives.
@@seanb3303 I am also friends with Andrew Jones, Clayton Shaw, Dan Wright, Sandy Gross, Wendell Diller, Mat Weisfield, Ze'ev Schlik (the list goes on and on). Should I not review any of their products because we are friends as well? With Dannys products, the NX-Oticas and H Frame Subwoofers (i've spent the most time talking about), I paid for them while taking a break from the channel years ago (when we were fostering). So yeah - nothing was given to me and there never has been any products "given" to me to review by Danny. I was a customer of his before I ever talked about the Oticas. What else do you have for me @Sean B? Thanks for the conversation and questions.
@@seanb3303 I have been working in audio retail and installation for many years. Focal, dyns, bewith japan, jbl etc. I am friends with all the Distributors but there is no BiAs when critisize their products. Most the things you will tell them they already know and we are honest in telling a costumer. Being friends is not an issue until you make it
@@Newrecordday2013 I replied to sean comment, I hope you get to read it also. This guy makes no sense or just wants to troll.
Hi Danny.......I'd like to accept your offer of coming to your place in Texas where you can put me up for a day, and looking at (and listening to) your setup !........ Will I have to provide my own meals ?
The reason a speaker cable can alter the sound is not that the signal that goes through that cable changes. The cable becomes a part of the amplifier circuit and some poorly designed amplifiers are very sensitive to those changes. If a speaker cable (or even worse, cable risers) makes a big difference, then sell your amplifier and get one that doesn't get affected by cable changes. Then you can use telephone wire and it won't make a difference.
If my ears roll off at 12KHz, what's the difference if speakers are perfectly flat or not up to 20KHz?
I think you need to worry more about stocking parts for your kits, and less about audio channels who make peanuts and put in a lot of work. Shame on you Ron for being a part of this elitist trash.
Better than egalitarian trash.
Speaker designers and manufacturers MUST have the best rooms and equipment in order to do their job properly. The vast majority of audio enthusiasts are never going to be in this position - for a variety of reasons. I would say that a reviewers job is to represent the buying public. They need a reference system that they know well in order to be able to perceive audible changes whether subtle or dramatic. Ideally they should also have a variety of equipment to allow themselves to hear what their readers/listeners might experience. I don't think it is incumbent on reviewers to put themselves in the position of designers - it is to put themselves in the position of customers.
Exactly and nobody watches a beginner reviewer and thinks oh he must have worlds of experience. You watch them because their relatable, they have heard as many systems as you. The lack of experience is valuable in that if they are getting enjoyment out of a piece of gear than you are likely to enjoy it as well.
learning to hear instead of listen is a start.. it takes time and someone to show you how unless your one of the golden few.. and I mean golden few.. that can hear instead of listen out of the box.. now.. if you have never heard properly and on a couple of good systems or pair.. then you could just settle for the HT in a box and be happy.. But if you want better.. like a better car.. better tool.. better anything.. and you see the value.. then learn how.. invest your time to learn.. and it will pay off and you will be much happier.. Hearing gives you the ability to find gems that don't cost tons of money.. or appreciating the ones that do. Just a thought.. `
I agree with that, but I think he's basically correct and describing the conflicts of interest that CZcamsrs have. It is ethically dubious to be selling all the products you get to review.
This is the same conversation we have in the wine industry. The Washington State wineries only get better if they receive valid critiques on their efforts. Reviewers educate the consumers, who then raise the bar for wineries. It is one thing to have a great looking wine label, but what you want is for the consumers to avoid wines with faults and buy well made product, at whatever price point is appropriate. There can be great budget wine and bad premium wine. Tasting wines side by side and talking it through will increase your awareness leaps and bounds. Like the budget speakers in the garage, the best wine can be the modest one you are drinking with good friends in a fun environment.
Thanks for your dedication to education.
but are you telling people they are greatly missing out by buying the $20 bottle instead of the $100? and if they don't taste a difference it's because "their wine glass is inferior...
I didn't know that Joe Don Baker was an audiophile, lolz.
Its Tribal because you guys make it like that.
You cannot expect to have every buyer have a treated dedicated room. This is snobbery.
This is not a video for buyers. This video is for youtubers reviewing gear. They should be responsible enough to since they are putting put information
Its a good thing he never said that in the video. Feel free to post a timestamp.
I found Vinyl Attack early on, I think I was one of his first 1k subscribers, really enjoy his content and agree with everything you say about him. I still love my BR 03s though ;-)
Thanks for saying what I have been feeling for a very long time. Your explanation of the CZcams audiopiles, their approach, tools, methods, gear, technical abilities and the importance of remaining brand agnostic.
As for room treatments and "the average room" I would say that some of us are a cut above average and do have dedication to optimizing our listening environments. Not to the degree Danny may but a balance between function and form. You do hit the mark saying it's all about the music. Every listener and every reviewers opinion is just that - opinion.
Please consider the test you mention. My audio club did similar. Place the listener in the sweet spot and keep the speakers behind a thin curtain. In this way you learn quickly who understands and who is just spouting opinions.
Every time he says "Budget" makes me cringe.
What is Budget?
$200 speakers?
$500 speakers?
$1000 Speakers?
You must really think we're all idiots.
Ron, given your recent pair of trustworthiness videos, you should have known better.
The takeaway from this video is don't waste money buying his products if your room isn't treated properly. Not worth it.
Or it could be, reviewers could be better.
As an audio fan that was a really informative video I learned some things today Thanks from Canada
Where does imperfect hearing come into play? Even in Danny's perfect room, two people will hear it differently. Wouldn't the perfect room be one that optimizes the sound to your particular hearing?
No. A system should reproduce sound the way you hear it in real life. If in real life you hear sound with a giant dip in the upper midrange, the system should reproduce it that way, without attempting to compensate.
@@gotham61 I disagree with this take. I have hyper sensitive hearing (especially high frequencies). I don't want everything sounding like real life because it actually can cause insane pain. The point of music is to enjoy it... So I would rather design the system for my hearing and not for some old man that can't hear those same frequencies (correctly/at all). I hear so many small things every day that most of the people miss. I would like to avoid some of those sounds if possible.
There's a reason why people like overly bright speakers because they can't hear them like the person next to them. Both should tune the system for their hearing.
@@gotham61 wrong
@@Sloimer Thanks for making such a great argument with excellent nuanced points of discussion.
@@gotham61 wrong again. Good job dummy.
What a load of disingenuous, arrogant, self-promoting drivel.
Despite all the weasel words about "perception" Danny essentially suggests that where the possibility for a conflict of interest exists, the reviewer inevitably so lacks integrity that they lie in their reviews rather than upset manufacturers. This is an insult to a great many reviewers ( of which I am not one ) and incredibly self-righteous considering that your own channel has a massive conflict of interest in that you are promoting and selling your own kits and upgrades. By your own logic we should not trust you at all.
You are 100% wrong.
@@hethaerto1 I'm normally about 85% wrong, but in this case I reckon I am 95% right, the 5% being that I was almost certainly being too kind to Danny, whose channel I enjoy but who jumped the shark big time on this one. 😉
i bought your carnegie acoustics csb-1 speakers modified and they were great! When i moved to a bigger room i had to sell these speakers and the guy that bought these wanted to hear my dynaudio focus speakers but chose the carnegies with their planar tweeter over these.
I am not surprised.
spot on and I agree, and i like to add your system at RMAF was amazing so that is why you have my attention every time you have something to say!
The arrogance of this guy is hilarious. Classic Asperger's engineer.
Arrogance doesn't mean he's wrong
@@rtth4378Sure. And it doesn't mean he's right either.
I think his arrogance is absolutely proof he is wrong.
Danny, have you ever had a dog that, when you came home, had a very guilty look on his face, and then when you walk into the house you find out that he has really made a mess? Well, when you took apart the Harbeth speakers and made your suggestions for improvements I thought that you were that dog. To me you looked like you knew that the changes that you were making were going to upset the balance that that speaker's designer had worked so hard to develop. I would have given you an award for the most guilty CZcamsr if such an award existed. You must know that Harbeth sounds the way that they do partly because of their choice of parts and that selection of parts is intentional because Harbeth is trying to give the consumer that "BBC Sound". So let's not have the bullshit about what you did to that design as being an improvement. It might be an improvement to some people, but I think most owners of that speaker would agree that your changes destroyed the character that they paid for. In this scenario Harbeth and a few other brands are the exception as most of the things that you suggest for the improvement of speakers are real improvements. But watch what you say about integrity, because you are not the white knight that you think you are.
Well said. People like what they like just as Danny likes what he likes. The problem is Danny pretends that his opinion and personal desires are the same things as facts and universal truths. Which, to him, of course, means if only the unwashed morons would listen to his gospel they would understand his brilliance and recognize their inferiority. Honestly, he comes across as someone who suffers from a narcissistic syndrome. He's right, every one else is wrong unless the other person happens to agree with him or designs products that measure the way he thinks they should measure. Plenty of reviewers at least online simply report the characteristics they hear and do not proclaim each new product as the next best thing. It's just something he wants to hear so that's what he hears.
If they customer was happy with them they wouldn't have sent them in, and those that have implemented the upgrade have responded that they are very pleased with the result. I also don't pick what is sent in. I just try to help the customers that do send products in. That one, was really nothing more than a budget level model. There was not much there to begin with.
@@davep2945 yes but we are all a bit like that these days arnt we ? i am no lover of his flat earther remarks with regard to anti cable audiophiles , but as far as lossy cabinet design he did state that "some people like that sound " without being condescending to them .he also sated that they measure quite well but they used far to many parts and that those parts were a bit "cheesy" i have no idea what he has against cheese i love a bit of English cheddar myself, but i supposed i wouldn't put in a crossover
@@dannyrichie9743 totally agree with you Danny.....nobody has to send their speakers to you for analyze them and "suggest" ...because that's what you do...."suggest" the upgrade to bring the speaker to a more balance toward a basic flat response....the tweaks after are then a matter of personal taste and can be achieve with an EQ or DSP ....but the speaker is optimized from a flat response base.....which I believe is correct
Cameron, are you one of the people who bought the overpriced ls3 harbeth? Sounds like it. You sound real angry and bitter.
Couldn’t he just dump his garbage, in front of his house?
I watch few speaker factory tours they tested there speakers inside a mini anechoic chambers and there computer said they passed. why mini anechoic?
Wow, now I am even more envious. I wish I was a hifi reviewer so we could hang out :)
But seriously, Danny, if you would give masterclasses to not only those reviewers, but to anyone into hifi, you would probably be fully booked until Christmas.
Anyway, good luck and much fun with those reviewers. I hope you have a good time.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I was the budget audiophile and I used to focus on primarily the entry level and the budget side of hifi, as the name would suggest. I feel and believe now that the best most fulfilling experience in this hobby can be had for under a thousand dollars. I sometimes miss doing what I did as a reviewer but I stand by what I did and said and the fact that 99.9% of everything I reviewed was bought with my own money. The best thing to come out of the budget audiophile for me is learning that all we really need in this hobby to truly get the fulfillment and sense of awe we so desperately crave is a Nad c326bee and an old pair of bozak concert grands.
LOl well a slight exaggeration i would guess ,but your right of course in the end hi fi has been infected with the consumer washing iPhone mantra "breaking news you must have the new improved this and that" the fact is that some speakers built 30 years ago sound better than some of the so called modern ones, Not always but mostly, vintage hi fi often did sound better when it was new compared to modern amps etc but all the caps have long since worn out their ESR being a 1/10 of what they were . this is how they get away with selling us new gear built in obsolesce, speakers through last a bit longer and if you renew the crossovers often sound better than anything around to day .
I think all reviewers should provide a panaramic picture of their room so we can know whether to trust them or not.