Quote:
Originally Posted by TorqueDog
Most of the time asking someone who works at a store with a really wide product selection which [thing] is best is probably coming down to a mix of what the manufacturer's marketing says and which ones seem to sell well with customers. Where I've found feedback to matter tends to be places like MEC, Arcteryx, etc. where they often employ people who are also into the activities that use the equipment they sell.
Amazon's reviews unfortunately are dependent on how much the reviewer knows in the first place. I bought a highly reviewed ground loop isolator from Amazon for a project I was working on, but the audio quality sounded like muddy, attenuated garbage. Deeper in the reviews (past the point where I'd stopped reading), someone reported that the filter completely trashed the sound quality in their system too, and to look elsewhere. D'oh.
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Yeah, reviews and recommendations are heavily affected by someone's knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, by default, many brick and mortar employee recommendations and online reviews are submitted by people who barely know the spec sheet and never read the instructions on how to use the product. I recall being at a car dealership and basically just asking innocuous questions to see how many I could get the sales guy to answer incorrectly/not know the answer to without him basically knowing that he answered incorrectly. "So, paddles are obsolete with the sports mode available in automatic, right?" "Yes."
I read between the lines for online reviews and ignore ones where people don't know what they're talking about.
"OMG, best speaker/headphones ever! Blew my old one away." (Likely from someone who is not an audiophile and migrated from a pair of dollar store speakers/headphones)
"I think this is great value at this price. If you need more, then you'll need to spend more." (Someone who knows more about audiophile calibre sound)
"Worked fine as is. With these mods I did, I think it's even better." (This might be a "buy now" calibre review).