He founded Stereophile. He died in 2009 at which time he was very bitter about the direction of high-end audio and maybe life in general.
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.“
Showing 5 responses by tomcy6
While seeking to reproduce the sound of real instruments in a real space is an admirable goal, I don't think it's practical for most people. If you have a large room, it might be possible to achieve with chamber music (string quartets, etc.) but many people listen to jazz and rock music. Is there anyone who wants to listen to a jazz or rock band performing in their homes? It would be an experience for sure, but not one you'd want to repeat very often. If you listen to live rock, most of it I've heard doesn't rate very high on sound quality. A concert can be enjoyable, but not audiophile quality. I'd love to see reviewers be given a blind test from time to time, but it would be impractical for every review to be double blind. I don't recall J Gordon ever doing or publishing a double blind review when he ran Stereophile either. |
If we visited the listening rooms of all the people on Audiogon who say that their systems sound like real instruments in real spaces, I'm pretty sure each system would sound different from the others. Then there is the problem of what does real sound like. The venue you listen in and your seating location while real instruments play greatly affects how that instrument sounds. We all hear differently too, very differently. Then there is the fact that we are listening to a recording. On the first Stereophile test CD (yellow booklet) there is a track where none other than J Gordon Holt reads an editorial from a very early Sterophile entitled, "Why Hi-Fi Experts Disagree." He is recorded through 19 different microphones and it is not that hard to tell when a microphone change occurs. So, it seems to me that real instruments in real space is not a hard objective reality. Of course, most of us want our systems to sound as real as possible and I'm striving for that too. I try to get vocals to sound natural. I'm closer than I used to be, but I don't think I'll ever get to the point where a large percentage of my recordings fool me into thinking that there is a real vocalist standing between my speakers singing just for me. YMMV |
@jonwolfpell - What do you think of Tedeschi Truck's Layla Revisited? IMHO, it ranks up there with the best live rock albums of all time. I don't understand why more people aren't raving about it. I'm sure the album sounds better than what people at the LOCKN' festival heard. No drunk behind you whoopin' at the top of his lungs and spilling beer on you either. |
Sorry to hear that your dad was treated this way by people who owed their positions to him, @jcharlesholt . It seems that nothing trumps money in our value system. |