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In Reply to: RE: HI posted by hifitommy on March 08, 2017 at 10:33:12
Tommy,
That was the first lesson I learned in hi-fi. Sold off a very nice five year old Fisher 500 (tubed) receiver that I bought new from the dealer and bought one of those horrible AR integrated SS amps because I read Julian Hirsch's review in Stereo Review and believed it. Got rid of that POS in less than one month. That was a very long time ago (about 1966) and an expensive lesson for this young kid to learn.
Some of these "Reviewers" are full of it and are either liars, tone deaf or on the take. I'll forever be in debt to Julian Hirsch for teaching me a valuable lesson. I wish that I would have been able to "thank" Mr Hirsch before he died. Now all that's left would be to piss on his grave (if I could find it).
Cheers,
SB
Follow Ups:
...and bought one of those horrible AR integrated SS amps because I read Julian Hirsch's review in Stereo Review and believed it.
I did that when I was 15 and didn't have a clue. It didn't take long to determine that the amp worked great at high power, but resolution tanked at low levels. I kept mine for a bit longer than you.
I did, however, get a glowing THD chart from none other than Dave O'Brien at a local McIntosh clinic.
That experience demonstrated to me the irrelevancy of the THD metric. :)
Mis applied Theocracy ....:)
i have to give him SOME credit because he got me to reading audio mags and understanding what distortion is an some of what to listen for.
i once referenced him to another enthusiast and was laughed at which stared me looking for another source besides high fidelity and stereo review. THEN i discovered AUDIO Magazine where things were more real.
later on, a friend turned me on to tas and much later stereophile, both in small format. i wallowed in those and still do to this day.
back to julian. he reviewed the JBL L100 which was a great looker with its waffle grille in numerous covers. they advertised in every conceivable magazine.
the upshot of his review was like this-the L100 is uncommonly flat from 30cps to 16k cps. well.....NOT. he had by then lost all credibility with me. i still subscribed to Stereo Review because the tariff was the lowest and it was at the least worth paging through.
its descendant is Sound and Vision which does the same thing but to be fair, sometimes has good reviews and reliable graphs.
another reason i didn't want to relinquish the subscription is Strve Simels, whose music reiviews pulled no punches. if he said it was good, you could bank on it. if it was crap, he was very plain in his use of the language. unusual for a critic in a mass market publication.
j godron holt was fired from high fidelity mag because he did the same with equipment. the infinity servo statik fared VERY well in contrast.
...regards...tr
comes from an engineer over at vintage:
He's not on the take...
somewhere along the way. Before HH Labs, he published the Audio League Report. There are a few issues floating around the web. His reviews were very subjective, and he frequently printed negative reviews due to awful sonics. HH labs handled reviews for High Fidelity, Stereo Review, Electronics World and a few others....essentially every mainstream audio/hobbyist magazine except Audio. Good reviews sold ads and kept him employed. I did read somewhere that there were more than a few reviews that did not see print because the equipment either did not work, or sounded so bad that it was just about impossible to spin into positive copy.
There is no good reason to evaluate and review something that sounds bad.
I disagree.
If I'm interested in an XYZ amp, and three different reviewers say they couldn't get it to sound good in their systems, or that it sounded great, but caught fire, then the negative review has done me a great service.
that was BOLD of Jerry to relate that.
...regards...tr
Audio was the best Audio publication bar non , sadly missed .......
i loved being able to read bert whyte (one of the stereo pioneers), ed canby , cordesman, and bascom king's amp tests with square wave response REALLY helped me understand audio in general, amps in particular.
the october BIBLE was a welcome issue as well as full coverage of professor I lirpA and his products, costly as they were.
...regards...tr
I notice that you didn't mention Len Feldman.
len wasn't my favorite reviewer. sort of a milktoast that didn't get the emerging picture in the hifi press. sort of a les bothersome julian.
...regards...tr
FYI, It's Milquetoast. The name of a timid character in an old comic strip.
More accurately, he was more like Julian in that he ran a testing facility like Hirsch-Houck Labs.
...regards...tr
I learned the same lesson the same way. Now the DBT guys say if you heard a difference then it wasn't gain matched...oh please give up on that one....
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