J. Gordon Holt was one of the earliest pioneers of high-end audio. Having founded Stereophile magazine back in the 1960's, his candor and steadfast intent to improve the quality of home audio systems would become the foundation for the hobby that so many of us enjoy in the modern day. The Absolute Sound's Harry Pearson followed suit and both TAS and Stereophile would help to define and foster the high-end audio industry in the decades to come. IMHO, this hobby would not be where it is today without Gordon and Harry. May they both rest in peace.
Does anyone know where this J. Gordon Holt comes from?
Interviewer: “Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?”
JGH: “Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.
Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.“