The Audio Critic

Peter Aczel was years ahead of his time and told it like he saw it.

Sometimes I despair of reading magazine reviews.

Just the other day I was looking for a new tyre inflator for my car and checked out several magazine reviews.

I thought it was a little strange that different publications all seemed to recommend the same few inflators. Nevertheless I headed over to Amazon UK to check out prices and see reviews there.

The first customer review I read immediately drew attention to the fact that inflators with screw on valves inevitably have the problem of the tyre deflating as you attempt to remove it after inflating.

So naturally I bought one with the lever type connector.

This did leave me wondering how could these different magazine reviews all have failed to spot this elementary design fault with their so called recommended screw on inflators?

@pwkmaven2 

Me too.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the result has been a lasting disdain for much of whats been written on the page. Much, if not all of it, simply boils down to little more than an endless stream of advertising driven flavour of the month empty endorsements.

However, when it comes to the likes of Peter Aczel, Floyd Toole, Amir from ASR, the guys at Audioholics etc I haven't found too much to disagree with.

My biggest eye opener was to read the Harbeth User Group forum.

Nothing else altered my way of thinking as much as reading the words of one Alan Shaw.

It took a fair bit of time and a certain amount of discomfort, but in the end I'm more or less in accord with the great man's opinions on amplifiers, cables, stands, connectors etc.

My only remaining issue is with his belief in the superiority of digital over analogue. He's probably right in theory, but not, at least in my experience, in practice.

There's far too many LPs which sound superior to their digital counterparts for me to fully endorse that.

@agisthos 

You may be right or you may be wrong.

However when such respected figures as Peter Walker, Siegfried Linkwitz, Peter Aczel, Alan Shaw and many others all allude to the same opinion regarding amplification, then perhaps we ought to respect that opinion at least?

In my experience with amps ranging from the NAD 3020 to the Naim 32/110 the amps I have owned have made insignificant sonic difference.

In fact my last 2 amps, a Magnum IA 170 and a Creek integrated sounded uncannily similar when I was able to swap one for the other.

This was a disappointment as I was labouring under the illusion that the far more expensive Creek was a vastly superior amp. I had previously read that it had a more sumptuous, warm and rich sound.

As we know the human perception system is subject to all kinds of illusions, yet it's still a disconcerting feeling when it's demonstrated in such a direct fashion.

@busboy

I have every copy of Audio Critic.

Wow, that’s impressive!

A complete set must be quite rare these days

I can’t think of any other magazine that I’d want to keep as a reference. The few that I do still have are there mainly for nostalgia and entertainment.

Thankfully copies of The Audio Critic are still available online.

http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_down.htm

It's posssiby the only audio magazine where the copy still rings true years later.

There’s a good write up of the audio press, including The Audio Critic, from a few years back here.

http://high-endaudio.com/magaz.html

Here’s a few choice quotes:

Stereophile is now basically a commercial marketing engine for established brands, and those rare new brands which can afford an extravagant marketing (advertising) budget, meaning hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Absolute Sound has also seriously deteriorated. Here’s one simple example: In issue # 114, they ’reviewed’ the VPI Aries Turntable with the JMW tonearm, with a total cost of $ 4,995, and the Jadis 845 triode amplifiers.

What did they compare the VPI Aries with? The Rega Planar 3 at $ 695. (Yes, I’m serious.) Guess which was better? It’s safe to say that no one (in the audio business) was upset at the result of such a comparison. More important, no prospective purchaser, of either turntable/arm combination, was enlightened about its relative audio performance and value.

"Magazines---all magazines--exist on the basis of advertising. That’s all that counts. Magazines are "sold" simply to have circulation which can then be used to sell advertising at prices commensurate with the circulation. IN FACT most magazines LOSE money on circulation. It doesn’t matter since they make their money on advertising." - Michael Fremer of Stereophile

@busboy

Nobody but nobody, however, will ever take the challenge and do the ABX testing to disprove his claims.

Alan Shaw of Harbeth once offered a pair of free top of the range Harbeth loudspeakers to anyone who could demonstrate that they could hear a difference between 2 different amplifiers.

There were no takers.

Then there was that infamous episode known as the Carver Challenge.

Bob Carver once claimed he could make a $700 transistor amp sonically indistinguishable from any high end amp.

Gordon J Holt and Larry Archibald disagreed and scoffed at this claim. After some careful thought they chose an unidentified high end tube amp that was only much later revealed to be a Conrad-Johnson Premier Four.

Much to the dismay of the Sterophile reviewers, Carver did exactly what he had claimed.

Thankfully the article is still available and it remains one for the ages.

Is it possible to make a $700 "mainstream-audio" power amplifier sound exactly like a high-priced perfectionist amplifier? Bob Carver, of Carver Corporation, seemed to think he could, so we challenged him to prove it.

The question posed above seems laughable.

....

But everyone has his limits of capability, and pride goeth before a fall; when Bob claimed, some time ago, in conversation with Stereophile Publisher Larry Archibald, that he could make his $700 Model 1.0 amplifier sound "indistinguishable from" any amplifier of our choice, we were confident that he was finally out of his depth.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/carver-challenge