Education
Because of my position as publisher of the
SoundStage! Network, I have a definitive advantage over most consumers, and even most
reviewers. I get to meet with many of the industry’s most talented and knowledgeable
designers, most of whom give me all the time I need to pick their brains so that I can
learn what I need to about the technical side of audio. I get an education not open to
everyone, and I value it tremendously.
What I have learned has helped me to see more clearly the
pitfalls that consumers encounter when shopping in retail stores, and even when reading
the print and online audio/video magazines. In comparison to what the designers of audio
and video gear have taught me, the level of knowledge evident on the sales floor and in
the press is often sorely lacking.
Just the other day, I was in an audio/video store when a
gentleman came in, explained to a salesman that his center-channel speaker was broken, and
then asked, "Can I use any center-channel?" The salesman quickly replied
"Yes!" But anyone with even a little knowledge of loudspeakers will know that he
was wrong. It’s actually quite difficult to find a center-channel that sonically
matches a pair of main speakers. Most such mismatches sound terribly wrong; it usually
takes a long time to find the center that best matches your front left and right speakers.
I don’t know whether the salesman was corrupt or
incompetent. More important, the customer himself wasn’t sufficiently informed to
know that the salesman had given him the wrong answer. He just did what too many do: He
put 100% of his faith into what the salesman had to say, and made his purchase based on
that. As a result, the customer was given a box containing some company’s
center-channel, paid who knows how much for it, and left the store with what was almost
assuredly the wrong speaker for his needs. It happens all the time.
How can consumers become informed enough that they’re
not taken advantage of by incompetent and/or unscrupulous salesmen? It’s not easy,
but I believe that this is an area where the press can help. But the key word here is can,
because the press doesn’t always do that job.
These days, you can’t trust everything you read --
perhaps you never could. Recently, I saw ten pages of one magazine’s editorial
space given up to "advertorials" -- in this instance, cable companies writing
about the supposed benefits of their own products. Does anyone actually believe that any
such "information" can be trusted? It’s nothing more than advertising
masquerading as journalism. Luckily, advertorials are usually pretty easy to spot. But
apparent information that’s just plain wrong isn’t so easy to detect -- and that
can happen when the journalist writing it doesn’t know enough about the subject.
For instance, while reading one popular high-end audio
magazine, I came across a passage in which the writer happily acknowledged that he had
little understanding of measurement data and how its derived, then went on to proclaim
that measurements don’t matter much anyway. For a writer to state that is to
acknowledge in print his own incompetence and ignorance, and then boldly underline it to
make sure everyone got the point. Nor was that the first time I’d read such a
statement. The mantra of "measurements don’t matter" is repeated more and
more often these days, and it not only misleads consumers, it indicates the audio
press’s own need of education. Writers who make such statements simply don’t
know what they’re talking about.
While measurements can’t tell the whole story of how a
product will perform in your home, they can certainly tell part of it. That's why it
important for reviewers to understand what measurements mean, and to be able to explain
them clearly enough that consumers can learn at least something about them. It’s
important, useful information, and that’s why, at the SoundStage! Network, we do
exhaustive measurements on preamplifiers, power amplifiers, and loudspeakers, and publish
them on our SoundStage! A/V site. We don’t do this just for fun -- it’s
reference-quality data that informs our readers. But you do have to know how to use that
information.
That’s where education comes in. In 2008, we at GoodSound!
are making an even greater effort to write informative, educational articles that readers
can learn from to help them make better buying decisions the next time they walk into a
store. These articles, which will appear in our "How To" and
"Features" sections, will mostly be about audio’s technical side, and
usually will focus on understanding the many kinds of product measurements that we
perform. These articles will be written in laymen’s terms so that anyone will be able
to understand them. They’ll help readers make better buying decisions so that they no
longer have to rely solely on what the salesman tells them. And they’ll be
informative enough that, when someone then reads a writer who says that measurements
don’t matter, that reader will know that that writer doesn’t know what he’s
talking about.
We begin this month. Look for Thom Moon’s "How
To" article on "How to Translate Speaker Sensitivity Ratings Into Real-World
Requirements," and my own "Features" article on "Understanding
Loudspeaker Sensitivity." And in the coming months, look for much, much more.
Remember, to make an informed purchase, you can’t rely
on salespeople -- or even audio writers -- to have the knowledge you require. These days,
you have to educate yourself, and GoodSound! is here to help you do just that.
…Doug Schneider
E-mail comments to the editor@goodsound.com.
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