Getting into hi-fi should be fun. You’re chasing better sound, exploring music in new ways, maybe building something you’ll keep for decades.

Instead, it often feels like navigating a minefield while people yell at you from the sidelines.

The Forums

You post a simple question - is this DAC worth it? - and get seventeen different answers. Half tell you measurements are everything and your choice is garbage. The other half say measurements don’t matter and you should trust your ears. Someone calls someone else a shill. The thread devolves into an argument about cables.

You leave more confused than when you arrived. And somehow, that confusion gets mistaken for learning the hobby.

YouTube

The reviews are entertaining. The production is great. But you’re watching someone demo speakers in their room, with their amp, playing their music. They tell you the KEFs are great for the price but so were the Elacs last week and the DALIs the week before. I’ve watched more hours of these videos than I care to admit, because they’re entertaining and there’s genuinely valuable content out there.

None of it is wrong, exactly.

It’s just not about you.

The affiliate problem

This is the quiet one. Virtually every best of list, every recommendation roundup, every what I’d buy in 2026 video is shaped by affiliate revenue. Not always maliciously - people recommend things they genuinely like. But the incentive is to recommend something, and preferably something available on Amazon with a decent commission.

When’s the last time a reviewer said:

I’ve been on the other side of this, actually. Back when I more actively ran The Deep Rough - a golf blog that got big enough that brands started sending me equipment to review - I felt the tension firsthand. When Nike flies you out to their R&D facility, it changes the dynamic. You want to be honest. You also want the relationship to continue. You tell yourself you’re being objective, and maybe you mostly are, but the incentive structure is always there, quietly shaping what you say and how you say it.

And look - I get it. Audio equipment is expensive. If you’re a creator trying to review gear, you need relationships to access it. In the golf world, there were manufacturers who just wanted their equipment out there and respected your take, good or bad. And then there were others who wanted to review copy before it went live, who expected something closer to a marketing piece than an honest assessment. I imagine audio is the same.

The point isn’t that creators are bad. The system just doesn’t reward saying wait or do nothing…even when that’s the best advice.

The real issue

Here’s what I’ve realized after years in this hobby and way too much money spent learning the hard way:

Good audio advice requires context.

• What do you already own?

• What’s actually the weak link in your chain?

• What’s your room like?

• What do you listen to?

• What bothers you about your current sound?

• What’s your budget - not the fantasy one, the real one?

A $200 DAC might be transformative for one person and a total waste for another.

It depends on what’s upstream, what’s downstream, and what they’re actually trying to solve.

But nobody online knows your context. So you get generic advice, or advice that worked for someone else’s completely different situation, or advice driven by whatever the person giving it happens to be excited about that month.

What good advice actually looks like

The best audio guidance I’ve ever gotten came from a handful of people who took the time to understand my actual system first. They asked questions before making recommendations. They told me when I was about to waste money. They knew when good enough was good enough.

It was less buy this and more here’s how to think about this.

That kind of advice is rare. It doesn’t scale. The people who can give it are either professionals who charge for it or enthusiasts who don’t have time to help everyone.

So I’m building something

What’s missing isn’t better gear advice. It’s contextual advice - advice that starts with understanding, not recommendations.

I’ve been working on an app called Harkov. The idea is simple: an AI that actually knows your system - what you own, how it’s connected, what your room looks like - and gives you advice based on your context, not generic recommendations.

It’s not ready yet, but I’m getting close to opening a small beta. If that sounds interesting, you can sign up at harkov.ai.