Does Anyone Else Member the Golden Age of Audio Insults and Product Degradation?

The most contentious UK magazine was probably The Flat Response which later morphed into Hi-Fi Review in the 1980s.

It was edited by one Chris Frankland who certainly had strong opinions about audio equipment. I recall reading that the SME arms got short shrift as did many 'exotic' cartridges.

CF seemed to genuinely prefer the Linn Basik arm and cartridge. (Neither of which were built by Linn).

I can only imagine how such opinions might have gone down in certain places such as Celestion whose SL6 and SL600 also took a real hammering.

When you see how tame reviews are now, lord knows how they got away with it back then.

Anyway, there's a great background article to the whole shenanigans linked below. Interesting to hear that Linn once employed blind listening tests themselves!

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The Flat Response Magazine  by Tom Tom Audio  Nov 28, 2017

http://thetomtomclub.ning.com/m/blogpost?id=6506457%3ABlogPost%3A9465

@waytoomuchstuff

And, who can forget?:

"No highs. No lows. It must be Bose."

Yes, and that simple formula continues to make millions for them.

We here might want realism in audio but obviously many, manyore than us don’t.

They seem to prefer a soft focus version of the real thing.

There’s a good flavour of the kind of mostly harmless nonsense Linn used to regularly churn out in the 70s and 80s here.

http://audiophilemusings.blogspot.com/p/linn-brochures.html?m=1

We seem to be living in an entirely different age now that the name NAD no longer raises even a faintly embarrased smile.

Oh well, there's still the mention of Schitt Audio to slip in if the dinner conversation gets a little dull.

On second thoughts, maybe not.