Were you an audiophile in the 1980s and 1990s?

No discussion about the most influential audio writers and reviewers would be complete without mentioning Bert Whyte. He made some of the earliest commercial stereo recordings, releasing them on tape (through Everest) even before there was the stereo LP, and that was before he landed at Audio magazine as a columnist. His experience recording some of the greatest orchestras and conductors served him well as an audiophile and critic.

As time passes, sometimes things change dramatically and you don't even think about it.

Back in the Stone Age, we didn't have the Internet, email, and nobody carried a cell phone. Audiomart was a "magazine", not a website. I say magazine generously. It was more of a pamphlet with individual ads typed on a typewriter in a little booklet deal. The commercial ads looked like they were cut and pasted in.

That's cut and pasted like with scissors and Elmer's. Seriously, things were every bit that primitive. the rag was published in Pennsylvania so those of us on the West Coast were at a serious disadvantage. Most all the good stuff was gone by the time we got our copies. 

We had to spend extra for First Class postage to have any chance at listings. Yes, things were like that then. A typed booklet through the mail was the best we had.

Real old timers will remember this--we used to place ads in the Classified section of the newspaper in the Audio section to buy and sell components. Yes, we did. The classified section of the newspaper.

Have any of the youngsters out there even seen a newspaper Classified section?

That's what I thought.

Then there were the garage sales. There was a period of time where nobody wanted that old tube stuff. Transistors were the way to go man. Dump the old junk and get what you could.

I found a bunch of Dynaco, Scott tube amps and preamps, what have you at garage sales for peanuts. They were happy to get rid of it. I heard about dumpsters that they had thrown the stuff into. No the dumpsters were gone, no diving thank you.

Times change. The way we do business has changed radically. It's easy to forget about that. eBay didn't exist. eBay became the great leveler for prices long ago.

People will just look up stuff and on their cell phones these days and get an idea of pricing.

We didn't have eBay listings to check. Even if we had, we had no cell phones to check with.

That was life in the Stone Age. 

I get all sentimental sometimes. Pardon me while I brush away a tear.

These kids today don't understand.

And their music, it's all noise. Now in my day...

Thank you @cleeds. I too read Bert Whyte in Audio Magazine, as well as Edward Tatnall Canby (think he was of British ancestry? ;-). I suspect the memory of them will die with us.

I started keeping an eye out for Bert’s Everest recordings after learning of them in The Absolute Sound, and now have a handful. Both Gordon Holt and John Atkinson were/are talented recording engineers. Can you imagine the clown reviewers at TAS (or even worse Positive Feedback) even knowing how to plug in a microphone? ;-)