How to navigate the noise and find your own path to hi-fi glory.
Introduction
The internet has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives over the past 30 years — and the world of hi-fi is no exception.
Reviews have always been an integral part of the hi-fi industry. Before the rise of the internet, printed magazines were the primary source. Then came dedicated websites. Today, arguably the most influential platform for hi-fi reviews is YouTube.
For a long time, traditional magazines held a near-monopoly on hi-fi reviews. But the internet has democratized that space. With minimal investment, anyone can now share their opinions and reach a wide audience. This revolution in idea-sharing comes with both advantages and drawbacks.
Marketing is a central part of modern business. Every company aims to raise awareness about its products and services within its target audience. But marketing is often weaponized — used not just to inform, but to sell products and services beyond their real value or to crush the competition. The return on investment (ROI) for marketing is typically very high, which is why advertising has become such a massive industry.
Targeting is the key. To maximize impact, you want your marketing efforts focused on potential buyers — not wasted on the uninterested. So, let me ask you this:
Can you imagine a more effective marketing platform than hi-fi reviews?
This is, of course, a rhetorical — and deliberately provocative — question. The point I’m trying to make is this: you can’t fully trust everything you read or watch.
Have you ever noticed how a new hi-fi product suddenly appears everywhere — on websites, in magazines, across YouTube channels — all at once? Does that mean the product is so exceptional that everyone is genuinely excited about it? Or is it more likely that the manufacturer simply has a larger marketing budget than others?
This doesn’t mean the product is necessarily good or bad, or that it’s worth the asking price. The point is — it’s almost impossible to tell.
What makes navigating hi-fi reviews even more difficult is the fact that this is a deeply subjective hobby. One person’s taste in sound doesn’t necessarily match another’s. Even if you stumble upon a completely independent review, it still reflects the reviewer’s personal experience.
And let’s not forget — music is emotional, even abstract. It triggers feelings that are incredibly hard to articulate. Trying to describe those sensations in words is inherently limited.
Arguably, all of this subjectivity has sparked a kind of counter-reaction: there are people who believe in pure objectivity and rely solely on measurements. I’ll come back to this later in this post.
For now, let’s state the obvious: nothing beats listening for yourself, right?
However, even that approach has its flaws. Where, when, and how you hear a component can make a huge difference. It’s virtually impossible to isolate the sound of a single piece of gear. Even in a controlled setup, when you swap out just one component, you’re still hearing the full system — including electronics, cables, and how everything interacts with each other and with the room.
In my experience, the best way to judge a component is to test it in your own listening environment — and not just for a couple of hours or even a few days. Ideally, you need to live with it for at least a few weeks.
Reviewers
Even so, you still need a shortlist of components to try. It’s practically impossible to audition everything at home — for all kinds of logistical, financial, and practical reasons. That’s where the internet and reviews can actually become valuable tools — if you build your own framework to navigate them effectively.
Let me share mine.
First of all, I keep a personal list of reviewers I can relate to. I’m not necessarily interested in what they’re reviewing, but how they articulate sound and describe their experience. It’s the language, insight, and structure that matter most to me — not the gear itself.
One reviewer I want to start with is Tom Martin from The Absolute Sound magazine. I’ve been watching his videos since they launched their YouTube channel, and I’m also a subscriber to the magazine. Here, I’ll focus on his video content.
To be honest, his early videos weren’t particularly strong. It was obvious he was reading from a teleprompter, and he looked uncomfortable in front of the camera. The videos felt more like written reviews being read aloud. But over time, the quality has improved significantly — they’re now orders of magnitude better than they used to be.
What really caught my attention was a blog post he shared a while back on “Audio Believability.” I found it incredibly insightful. He continues to use the challenges outlined in that post as a framework for his reviews.
Even in a subjective domain like hi-fi, having a well-defined framework makes the reviewer’s perspective easier to understand — and easier to compare across different reviews. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, the way Tom Martin articulates sound — and the structure he brings to his reviews — had a profound impact on how I approach critical listening.
Another reviewer I’d like to mention is Herb Reichert from Stereophile magazine. He has been writing for the magazine for quite some time and occasionally appears on YouTube as well. Herb has been in the hi-fi world for decades, and in my opinion, he’s one of the most mature audiophiles out there.
The maturity I’m referring to has nothing to do with age — it’s about listening maturity: the ability to truly enjoy what you’re hearing and to listen with depth and perspective.
In one of his interviews, he said something that stuck with me — I’m paraphrasing here: “Whatever you buy, don’t buy anything boring.”
That single quote completely changed the way I approach hi-fi.
At its core, this hobby is about the joy of listening to music. The more time you spend in front of your system, completely immersed in music, the better. After reading Herb’s reviews and listening to his insights, I simplified my own critical listening approach to one very basic criterion:
When I’m listening to something new, if I find myself fully immersed in the music, with the urge to keep playing one song after another, one record after another — that’s the right component for me.
If, on the other hand, my audiophile brain kicks in and I start nitpicking the sound, or if I get bored and feel the urge to shut the system down and walk away — it’s not for me.
Dead simple. Thanks to Herb Reichert.
I’m also a long-time viewer of the YouTube channel The Audiophiliac, hosted by Steve Guttenberg. Steve has been in the hi-fi world forever, and he happens to be a good friend of Herb Reichert. He takes a fully subjective approach to reviewing gear and tends to focus primarily on affordable components.
What I appreciate about Steve is his relaxed, passionate approach and the way he articulates his listening experiences. He uses music — and records — to describe what he hears, often referencing less common tracks instead of the overused demo songs we’ve all grown tired of. That makes his reviews feel more personal, more grounded, and far more enjoyable to watch.
Steve has asked this question on several occasions — and I’m paraphrasing again: “How do you distinguish better from different in hi-fi?”
It’s a simple question on the surface, but there’s no easy answer.
He also poses another important question: What actually qualifies as an upgrade, and how do you know when it’s time to make one? His advice is to first identify what bothers you about your current system — and then focus your upgrade efforts specifically on that area.
These questions were monumental for me in shaping how I approach gear changes. And believe me, they’ve saved me from a lot of unnecessary hassle — and more importantly, from making costly mistakes.
Another reviewer I really like is Tarun, known as A British Audiophile. In contrast to Steve, Tarun takes a much more analytical and structured approach to his reviews. He brings a solid framework to each video, clearly outlining his criteria and observations. He also dives into some of the more technical and “nerdy” aspects of hi-fi — which I find incredibly valuable, especially if you’re interested in the engineering side of the hobby, like I am.
Lastly, I want to mention Ron Resnick, co-owner of the What’s Best Forum. Although he’s not a full-time hi-fi reviewer, he regularly publishes in-depth interviews with manufacturers and industry veterans — and they’re some of the best content out there.
What I really appreciate about Ron is the quality of his questions. He asks the things we’re all thinking, but that most people rarely have the nerve to say out loud. For example, when interviewing a manufacturer about the latest iteration of one of their products, he always asks, “What exactly has improved sonically compared to the previous generation?”
It’s both insightful and, at times, entertaining — especially when you watch certain manufacturers struggle to give a meaningful answer.
I read and watch almost every hi-fi reviewer out there. There are many more respectable voices I haven’t mentioned, but what I’ve shared here are the ones who’ve had the greatest influence on me — on how I listen, and how I evaluate gear.
That said, there are also plenty of reviewers I don’t respect. In some cases, the bias is so blatant it feels like an insult to the viewer. It’s painfully obvious when a review is more of a sales pitch than an honest opinion — often funded, directly or indirectly, by the manufacturer.
Ironically, the more emphatically a reviewer insists that they’re “completely independent” and “pay for everything out of pocket,” the more suspicious I become. In my experience, the louder the claim, the more likely the opposite is true. And, this is not just a speculation, it’s based on insider information from the industry.
Forums
Forums don’t have the best reputation when it comes to being a reliable source of meaningful information — and for good reason. People often have a tendency to argue when they disagree, and conversations frequently get derailed after just a few posts.
That said, I still want to highlight one forum that, in my opinion, provides genuinely useful insights into hi-fi and audio gear: the What’s Best Forum.
If you spend some time reading through it, you’ll notice that many contributors are highly experienced and truly know what they’re talking about. Most of them are actual owners — people who have bought the gear themselves or experienced it firsthand in familiar listening environments. In my opinion, this kind of grounded, real-world experience is one of the most valuable sources of information available.
Even if you don’t actively contribute to the forum — like me — I still recommend reading it. Over time, you’ll start to recognize users whose taste aligns with yours, and you can benefit greatly from their impressions and recommendations.
The Objectivists
Like in many areas of life, hi-fi enthusiasts are unfortunately divided into camps — primarily, subjectivists and objectivists.
Subjectivists focus solely on their personal listening experience — how the gear makes them feel and how it performs in real-world listening. Objectivists, on the other hand, concentrate on engineering precision and measurements, believing that sound quality can and should be quantified.
Each group has its own forums, YouTube channels, and websites — and sometimes, they clash. Whether it’s in comment sections or online discussions, these debates can quickly become heated — and at times, far from civil.
Then there are people who either aren’t aware of these camps, or simply don’t care. I count myself among them.
I believe both camps make valid points, and I try to stand somewhere in the middle. Most hi-fi products are, after all, electronic devices, and there’s no question that engineering matters. I want to spend my money on gear that’s well-designed and manufactured to a high standard. But at the same time, I also want to enjoy how it sounds — to be immersed in music and to feel emotionally connected when I listen.
To me, these goals are not contradictory — they’re complementary.
In my experience, measurements alone never tell the full story. They reveal how well a component is engineered technically, but not how it will sound. I’ve heard speakers, amplifiers, and DACs with nearly identical measurement profiles sound dramatically different.
That said, I also don’t want to use components that sound decent but reveal obvious design flaws. I want gear that’s both technically solid and sonically engaging.
Hi-fi is part science, part art. Nearly every circuit topology has already been explored — especially in analog audio. Whether solid-state or tube-based, most designs trace their roots back decades. Yet, we still have thousands of manufacturers producing gear that sounds uniquely different, even when based on similar circuit principles.
That’s the artistic side of audio. And that, in my view, is what separates the great manufacturers from the merely competent ones.
Let me use Kondo Audio Note’s ONGAKU — which I recently wrote about in a blog post — as an example.
Its schematic was published by its designer back in 1992. When you look at the circuit, it’s a fairly straightforward design with no major surprises. Many DIYers have built versions of this amplifier, and even some manufacturers have released their own replicas.
And while some of those versions sound surprisingly good, none of them come even close to what the real ONGAKU sounds like.
Why? Because it’s not just about the circuit design.
Every detail matters. Every single component — the capacitors, resistors, inductors, transformers — plays a role. The internal layout matters. The wiring matters. The voicing of the amplifier comes from how all these parts are chosen and implemented together.
The best manufacturers — like Kondo — use these elements the way a master sculptor uses tools and materials. They shape the sound with intention and artistry, far beyond what’s visible in a schematic or a measurement.
The Dealers
Hi-fi isn’t a necessity — it’s a luxury. And in today’s world, given the prices involved, it can be far more expensive than jewelry or mechanical watches. In my opinion, hi-fi buyers deserve to be treated just as well as high-end jewelry customers — if not better.
The entire hi-fi journey starts with the buying experience. You need trusted dealers who know what they’re talking about, who take the time to understand you and your listening preferences. They should be able to demonstrate equipment in a proper listening environment — and most importantly, they should offer home trials for serious buyers.
Post-sale support is also a crucial part of the experience. Not everyone has the time or technical know-how to properly set up a hi-fi system. Dialing in speaker placement, in particular, can be challenging and frustrating if not done correctly. A proper hi-fi dealer must have the skills and resources to support their customers after the sale — not just until the payment clears.
Unfortunately, dealers like this are rare. But they do exist.
I’m one of the lucky ones who has a dealer that goes above and beyond, and it has made my hi-fi journey all the more enjoyable. They are responsive, answer phone calls or messages almost 24/7, and—despite being in a different city—regularly come to my home when I need hands-on help.
Whenever I want to audition a piece of gear, they simply ship it to my home and let me keep it as long as needed to make a decision. No pressure. No rush.
That’s the kind of experience every enthusiast deserves.
Once you’ve navigated the internet and created a shortlist of components, always check which dealers carry those products — and, more importantly, what kind of service they offer. That’s an integral part of the hi-fi journey, and it can make all the difference.
Final Verdict
Navigating the world of hi-fi is as much about self-discovery as it is about sound. There’s no single authority, no universally “correct” opinion — only perspectives shaped by personal taste, experience, and context. Reviews, forums, measurements, and dealer advice can all serve as useful tools, but none of them are infallible. The key is learning how to interpret them, filter out the noise, and find what truly resonates with you.
Over time, I’ve realized that the most valuable guide isn’t the loudest reviewer, the sharpest graph, or even the best demo — it’s your own listening instincts. The gear that keeps you in your chair for hours, immersed in music and forgetting the world, is the gear worth keeping. Everything else is just data.
So trust your ears. Build your reference points. Be open, but skeptical. This hobby isn’t just about chasing perfection — it’s about learning what matters most to you, and curating a system that brings that to life.