Opinion

When it comes to product longevity is hi-fi a hobby built on hearsay? Barry Willis goes beyond the brochure to make the case for Consumer Reports-style reliability ratings in high-end audio

In the queue at my local bookseller, the May issue of HFN in hand, I was lured by the bold cover of the 90th anniversary issue of Consumer Reports: '1044 Products Rated & Reviewed – Most & Least Reliable'.

I ploughed through many pages devoted to cars, flatscreen TVs, household appliances, laptop computers and printers, but audio products received scant coverage. There was only one page devoted to headphones and earbuds, rated not according to sound quality or comfort, but on predictions of reliability.

Cosy conflicts

A member-supported operation, Consumer Reports has a long history of honesty in reviewing a wide variety of products, purportedly purchased at retail rather than requested as loans. This policy frees reviewers from any potential conflict-of-interest arising from relationships with designers, manufacturers and distributors that may be deemed too cosy. It enables them to state opinions without inhibition and may even keep litigators at bay.

High-performance audio publications such as HFN and sister title Stereophile subject each piece under review to exhaustive bench testing. Many other audio journals do not, offering no apologies for lacking test laboratories and technical acumen, as if they are irrelevant. But Consumer Reports goes a step further by calculating reliability projections based on surveys of its members. While not the most scientifically accurate way to predict reliability, it's at least based on honest reporting from thousands of consumers who have actually purchased and used products incorporated in the Consumer Reports database. A more accurate way would be to analyse warranty claims or repair records from service shops, but that has rarely been attempted – if ever, and probably never with audio.

Service secrets

The best alternative is publicly available records supplied by automakers and manufacturers. (In the June Consumer Reports, the top wired headphones were from Audio-Technica and Grado; the top four noise-cancelling headphones were from Anker, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, and Sennheiser, in that order.)

Which leads to the sobering fact that audiophiles are basically fumbling in the dark when seeking guidance about the reliability of any purchase. The only trustworthy sources for such information are service technicians of long experience who can recite a long list of poorly-executed audio products whose very names are sometimes venerated for no reason other than their enduring presence in a sliver of the consumer electronics industry.

The high-performance audio community is a small one – too small for the Consumer Electronics Association to track, and too small for clearly well-intended publications such as Consumer Reports to deal with. With few exceptions, the products on display at audio shows, examined in depth by veteran reviewers, and the subject of endless discussion in online forums, are made in small batches by dedicated designers and sold through a network of independent dealers – a land of obscurity.

Boutique builders

Scroll through the thousands of listings in the online Audiogon Blue Book of audio products (www.audiogon.com/bluebook). Even with decades in this industry, you'll see only a few recognisable brand names. Most listed products were made in small batches by three people in a rented garage or by one obsessed guy working feverishly in his basement. High-performance audio is as far removed from the larger electronics industry as the planet Neptune is from the sun.

For most of us audiophiles, the only useful information we can glean when it comes to a product's durability is in the form of drive-by appraisals from similarly baffled fellow enthusiasts. Hard statistics are nonexistent. Wouldn't it be nice to have some reliable guidance to hand before dropping six figures on a Whirling Dervish turntable? Wouldn't you sleep better with an audio-centric Consumer Reports at your side?