The Audio Critic


Thoughts?
lisaandjon
Exactly. And he's a hypocrite calling audiophiles "tweako cultists" when he is a cult leader himself. He's a god to die-hard objectivists who repeat his mantras over and over again. The whole thing is a sham. Then again, some subjectivist reviewers do go over the top calling $10k and up components as bargains. Compared to $50k components, but not in itself.
Though his magazine was always The Audio Critic (with the same typeface), Peter Aczel had two very different lives as a consumer audio journalist. Initially, from 1977 through early 1981, The (small-circulation ) Audio Critic was in thrall to, and catered to, the commercial consumer ’high-end’ audio business, based on casual subjective listening to audio systems and components. The high circulation consumer audio press (High Fidelity, Stereo Review), on the other hand, based their judgments on engineering and physical measurements of the components.

In early 1981 Aczel dropped, or, as he would later say, suspended, the publication of The Audio Critic to go into the loudspeaker business. His speaker company, Fourier Systems, attracted some positive attention for a few years, but eventually closed for lack of interest.

Aczel became friends with Bob Carver,founder of Carver corporation, producer of inexpensive audio electronics. Aczel followed Carver’s dispute with Stereophile, in which Carver claimed he could make a transistor power amp whose sound the editors of Stereophile would be unable to distinguish, under blind listening conditions , from a tube power amp of Stereophile’s choosing.Needless to say, Carver won the dispute. This impressed Aczel to the extent that he had a ’road to Damascus’ conversion to the engineering side of consumer audio, replacing casual listening tests with double-blind ABX comparisons.

In late 1987, his attempt at being a speaker manufacturer having ended badly, Aczel revived the The Audio Critic magazine, but this time he would stick to hard-nosed detailed physics-based analysis and evaluation of audio components. He wanted to establish a special niche where he would subject ’high-end’ consumer audio components to rigorous tests and engineering analysis and compare them with garden-variety mass-produced audio components. Aczel’s specialty was loudspeaker reviews, where the listening tests would still be subjective (because double-blind listening tests of loudspeakers were impractical without large-cap corporate support), but Aczel would trace the deficiencies and strengths he heard back to the measurements. He associated with the best audio engineers he could find and delighted in exposing the ignorance and superstition of the ’high-end’ audio business.

Love him or hate him, he couldn’t be ignored, because, most of the time (following his conversion), he was right.

Peter was unwilling to say other than what he believed. Others in our recent public arena history may also match that style. What he did say could and was always matched by what I then heard. Still looking for another to follow with that credibility based on hearing confirmations.

.... just thought I would take some time this Saturday afternoon to research and answer some questions I have to try to get a direction on some new stuff I'm going to buy.

After plowing through piles of quasi-ads and related - I reflected on The Audio Critic (pre Internet) and what those pages revealed to a much younger audiophile.

The style - was very aggressive and opinionated (sound familiar?),

.... but the opinion / info always was born out to be right by what I actually heard.

I'm taking a chance on getting flamed here - but hopefully there are others out there that (now) will also be willing to be heard too.

Anyone out there that uses a new The Audio Critic with similar accuracy today?

Okay. I think that's long enough.

I work in an industry that sells opinions. Where you have a bad or flawed opinion it CAN bring one to the brink of loosing a business more times than not.

Errors and Omissions insurance is definitely required there. Careful conclusion / directions evolve also as a natural result of trying to survive, This question on Aczel etal (currently) is far less significant certainly in the big picture.

I believe in good Alpha experience based thoughts here. Omegas not so much.

If anyone with integrity of thought has a TAC replacement recommendation - please post it here. I do return occasionally.

Thanks. I remain hopeful.