any professional reviews of the new 340s yet?

[curtis]

Did the sun just go behind a cloud? Because suddenly I sense, "shadey."

suddenly??

[Jonnyozero3]

suddenly??

lol. just being metaphorical or whatever. the shade has been there awhile. which, of course, is your point

[Eddie]

asking a single ufw-10 to perform in a 6000 foot^3 room is most definitely asking too much i would think. from what i understand, you'd probably need multiple ported big SVS subs to do a room like that justice.

True. I also heard a pair of the UFW10s in a maybe 10x12 room, watching "Master and Commander"...much better SPL of course but somehow just not terribly impressive. In a smaller room for music I'm sure they do a good job though.

[Clint DeBoer]

Well, to be honest this is an amazing thread. Lots and lots of assumptions and mis-drawn conclusions. I especially like where are intentions and ethics are drawn into questions as well without anyone ever approaching us about it one way or the other.

I can honestly say I have never met a manufacturer so brash as to allow its readers (and Forum Founder) to publicly bash a home theater website with over 1 million monthly readers. That took some cojones. You must have some incredibly good speakers to be willing to do that for no good reason.

Let me make a few brief statements and then I'll leave you to misinterpret and twist my responses as you see fit.

Audioholics has advertisers. It is a pretty easy concept to understand and is the only way we would be able to devote ourselves full time to writing comprehensive product reviews. While I love Consumer Reports, that business model does not seem to work in the home theater market.

Advertising, however does not mean we don't review products from other manufacturers. Reviews are not advertising. Reviews are what make Audioholics worth reading and make the site what it is - that and our technical articles. Saying that we don't want to review competitors to our advertisers could only be said by someone who didn't take 2 seconds to peruse the site.

Blaming Axiom Audio for the lack of Ascend reviews? I don't think so. They are big boys and girls and didn't seem to be offended by our reviews of Aperion Audio or Radiient speakers even though those companies also sell online.

We simply refuse to entertain direct, unfounded criticism of ourselves on a forum we provide to our readers. I think this is fair. We provide our emails and the PM system for people to ask questions about how we do things and why - we don't need public criticism of our motives. I simply don't have the time to entertain every person who associates advertising with unfair reviews and bad business practices. For those interested, by all means, start your own website and run it for free. We love our jobs and would rather do it full time.

I see that you pulled a quote from "halseff" that appeared on our forums. It would have been nice to also mention that he posted that 6 times in 6 different threads after we had already banned him for publicly accusing us (multiple times after being told of our policy). I'll be the first to admit, I spend the majority of my time on the website, not the forums - so when I suddenly see a thread degenerate into Audioholics-bashing (hey, like this one) it simply gets deleted. In fact, the similarity in tone of this thread matches the end of the one I deleted.

What REALLY surprises me is to see a manufacturer allow a one-sided thread like this to go on, especially when we had already discussed reviewing their products but, for whatever reason, haven't yet gotten it scheduled (I believe due to product availability no less).

I know controversy is a whole lot more fun to discuss, but the boring and sunny truth is that we try very hard to separate reviews and advertising - and this entire thread, while I'm sure fun to participate in, is full of ignorance, complete misinformation and flat-out defamation.

Thank you Ascend Acoustics, you have certainly made an impression on us.

[curtis]

Clint,

Welcome to the forum.

I think the perception here is your advertiser's products get more favorable reviews than non-advertisers, not that Audioholics does not review from companies that do not advertise. That perception has not only been spoken of here, but other forums as well....manufactuerer and non-manufacturer.

You have to admit links to "buy it now" and affiliate programs on the site also do not lend itself well to the non-biased nature your site wants to portray. These two things have been brought up in this thread, and while it may seem one sided to you, if you could address and discuss them, it would go a long way in removing the one sidedness.

[Galwin]

I can't speak to the motives of Audioholics, but if you are suggesting that consumers should not be suspicious of the connection between advertising dollars and reviews, you are the one living in ingnorance. Even serious scientifiic reviews in the areas of medicine, pharmocology, and engineering have been tainted by the influnce of money/advertising. It's not hard to fathom that it may be happening in hi-fi.

Though I can't speak to your web site, as a daily visitor I feel confident speaking about this one. The folks here are mostly looking for honest information. Posters posed legitimate questions about your site's review policies. To refer to this as defamation is a ridiculous overexageration. Of course, you can manage the site and delete posts as you see fit, but realize individuals will have different interpretations of your editorial policy. What you choose to keep and delete/ review ant not review says a lot ineed.

Your site provides valuable technical information that I much appreciate, but when it comes to reviews, I am careful to recognize the contaminating influence of money in selecting and juding products. It's true for any publication that accepts advertising dollars. I encourage all hi-fi consumers to continue to be skeptical and to raise questions about the validity of reviews in this and other forums. We all benefit in the long run.

[Gene DellaSala]

I think the perception here is your advertiser's products get more favorable reviews than non-advertisers, not that Audioholics does not review from companies that do not advertise. That perception has not only been spoken of here, but other forums as well....manufactuerer and non-manufacturer.

You have to admit links to "buy it now" and affiliate programs on the site also do not lend itself well to the non-biased nature your site wants to portray. These two things have been brought up in this thread, and while it may seem one sided to you, if you could address and discuss them, it would go a long way in removing the one sidedness.

Perhaps I can pipe in here. I started Audioholics over 7 years ago for a very good reason – to debunk much of the misinformation found in this industry and also offer a level of comprehensiveness in reviews not typically found by other online publications, especially print magazines. Since then, we have been very strict about companies whom we accept advertising from. We don’t accept ads from companies whose products and services we haven’t personally verified and on occasion have fired advertisers because of negative feedback we received from our readers. I can assure you this doesn’t make you rich in this business, but it allows us to rest well at night and feel good about the service we offer this industry. Best of all, none of what we do costs our readers a DIME. Yet they have full access to our content, our monthly forum and sitewide contests, special deals areas, etc.

Regarding Reviews of Non Advertisers
We have MANY favorable reviews of companies that don’t advertise with us such as reviews from Klipsch, Aperion Audio, Panasonic, Sony, Mirage, BG, Rotel, Optoma, etc. The list goes on, but if anyone spends more than 5 minutes on our site, they wouldn’t even question this.

On the flipside, many of our advertisers receive favorable reviews for good reason – they MAKE GOOD PRODUCTS! Hence why they are advertisers on our site. Makes sense doesn’t it?

Many of our advertisers have received positive product reviews for years before we ever picked them up as advertisers. We also don’t award companies Product of the Year without having first hand experience with the products. We have learned from many manufacturers that Print Magazines charge for this honor, yet nobody seems to find fault in that. It’s odd how many criticize E-zines more than they do Print Magazines, yet don’t seem to mind the full page ads following the review of the product within the same issue.


Buy it Now links are set up for the benefit of our readers. Many of our online advertisers and Affiliates offer discount promotions and thus we link up to them for extra savings to our readers. Its funny b/c we even have Buy It Now links through our affiliates on projector products that weren’t reviewed favorably.

When all is said and done you can either believe what we are saying, or dismiss it for the misguided propaganda found in this thread. Personally we are too busy focusing on quality content to concern ourselves with this nonsense and won't address it further.

Your site provides valuable technical information that I much appreciate, but when it comes to reviews, I am careful to recognize the contaminating influence of money in selecting and juding products. It's true for any publication that accepts advertising dollars. I encourage all hi-fi consumers to continue to be skeptical and to raise questions about the validity of reviews in this and other forums. We all benefit in the long run.

Yes and we even state to people the following in our Product Review Pages:

http://www.audioholics.com/productreviews/index.php

Disclaimer
Our reviews are based on subjective listening tests and objective analysis. We do our best to define the primary important design criteria and metrics to base our analysis. However, sometimes the performance criteria we deem important don't always match up to all particular consumer applications. Thus we recommend using our reviews, and all reviews, as a guideline and informational source only to assist you in your comparative shopping. We sincerely hope you appreciate our efforts and wish to encourage any consumer in the marketplace to evaluate the product in question, if given the opportunity, on their own and formulate their own opinion based on personal perceptions of the products performance and ability to satisfy their specific needs.

[drewface]

nothing like some good old-fashioned fist throwing, eh?

anyways... i used audioholics reviews, along with many others, when first starting to build my stereo system. i think they are good reviews, and never looked too deep into the whole advertising/review connection.

having said that, i don't like how clint made a remark about ascend as a company based on the discussions taking place in their forum. we are blessed with the right to free speech, and i applaud ascend for NOT censoring these forums. at the same time, i can understand how a company may want to remove certain threads from their own forums that criticise the company (or some other company, for that matter), but i still think this should only be done if it gets excessive.

i say monitor your own forums how you see fit, but don't make judgements about the company that owns a forum based on what that forum's users say in it. (unless, of course, the company's employees are the ones throwing the fighting words around...)

can't we all just get along?

[Clint DeBoer]

(unless, of course, the company's employees are the ones throwing the fighting words around...)

Well, actually that's our perception since both the Admin and Forum Founder are participants in this very thread.

[drewface]

neither of them outright said you are a bad company. there has been a concern raised about the integrity of your reviews, and they both agreed that there are some strange connections.

i think there is a ton of misunderstanding on both sides of this argument, and i would personnally hate to see audioholics turn completely against ascend because of this silly little thread, because ascend is an excellent company that i have received excellent customer support and products from, and audioholics has a large presence in the audio equipment review community, and i happen to think their reviews are fine the way they are.

i think you guys should kiss and make up...

and maybe do a review of ascend's speakers...