All the old issues of Stereo Review are online!!


And available here:   https://www.americanradiohistory.com/HiFI-Stereo-Review.htm

The infamous Clark amplifier test is January, 1987, if anyone wants to re-live that.  I remember reading that when it came out (I was just out of college, but, having worked at an audio shop when I was 14, was already well into the hobby).  That was when I began to be aware of how I might be suckered by appearances.

Lots of things to love or hate, but oh, the advertisements!
ahofer

Showing 2 responses by millercarbon

Never said Julian Hirsch was a fraud. Seriously wrong, sure. Together with Stereo Review did serious damage to countless audiophiles? Without a doubt. Even today many so-called audiophiles persist with their same counterproductive measurement matters more approach. Its pure crapola and not even like many of them know this is where it comes from but there it is.

And yeah the ads and cartoons are fun. But Stereophile had those too, and without all the self-defeating rhetoric in between.

Now if you want something worth celebrating that by the way would be it. J Gordon Holt came along with the revolutionary proposition that even something as simple as wire might not sound all the same, and that the way to find out was not to measure it but to listen to it.

In doing this J Gordon Holt’s Stereophile created a whole new lexicon, industry, and indeed a movement. J Gordon Holt and Stereophile, probably more than anything else, invented the audiophile. That is history. That is something worthy of being archived for posterity.

Stereo Review died 20 years ago, and good riddance. Not that measurement doesn’t have its uses, but Hirsch and Stereo Review took it way too far, to the detriment of the hobby. J Gordon Holt and Stereophile have utterly discredited that approach. Yet remnants linger on, the ghost of Hirsch and Stereo Review haunting audiophiles to this day.

Stereo Review, RIP. Long live Stereophile!
Music reviews and ads, okay. Editorial content especially technicals, no way. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch pushing their wire doesn't matter and if you can't measure it it doesn't exist point of view did real audiophile damage we are still dealing with today.

I had a sub for years. Darn near ruined me. Took me years to realize just how wrong he was. Now with it on-line they get to misinform a whole new generation. Wonderful.