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In Reply to: Well... posted by Charles Hansen on February 3, 2007 at 07:20:38:
>>It was only after his speaker manufacturing fiasco that he lost >>his hearing. (Maybe he took too much oxycontin, like Rush >>Limbaugh!) After a hiatus (it seems like it was around a year or >>so), the reborn "Audio Critic" was a completely different animal -->>tedious, irrelevant, and pompous to the point of absurdity.As someone who has read very late copy of the Audio Critic, I simply cannot agree with your comments here. The reviews are much more substantive than what is obtainable in other magazines with the notable exception of the AudioXpress which geared to slightly different market. At any rate, I salute the courage of Colloms and Messenger for publicly acknowledging the severe deficit of critical commentary in todays audio journalism and applauding Peter Aczel' work as an example of critical audio commentary.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
Follow Ups:
Did you ever have a chance to read the original version of the Audio Critic? If so, what did you think of it? And how would you reconcile his stance at that time with his current stance?
No, but I guess you are speaking about this, his current viewpoint seems consistent with the audioworld outside of highend audio.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
I'm afraid it appears, based on the content of your curt post, that you haven't a clue!I mean what is the "audioworld outside of highend audio", is that the world that excludes readers of the most popular audio print magazines (Stereophile, TAS, Hi-Fi Choice, Hi-Fi World ... and that's just the popular ones in the US and UK) and WebZines (SoundStatge, Enjoy the Music... established ones out of what must be 100s!). Is it the world that excluded the bulk of the members of the Ausio Asylum?
If that's roughly correct then may I ask... who cares?
Your blinkers are showing.There is bnow (and has been since at least the 70's) a significant 'audio world' that has little use for the Emperor's Clothes fantasies that are the stock-in-trade of the 'audiophile' journals you cite. Today they read and post to places like hydrogenaudio.org, prosoundweb, Audioholics and AVSforum. They're more likely to read JAES articles, the white papers of people like Bruno Putzys and Dan Lavry, or the gear deconstructions of David Rich in Sensible Sound, than some column in TAS or Stereophile describing something as 'I don't know how it works, but it does!'. And even you can't fail to have noticed that even here, on the aptly named Asylum, there's a persistent contingent of hobbyists who don't drink the audiophile kool-aid.
...I thought his comparison of about 23 preamps in his first issue was pretty amazing.Even if he crowned the Rappaport Pre-1 better than the Levinson JC-2 and no one else seemed to agree. At least the tubed ARC SF-4 (follow-up to the classic SP3-A) came in third.
But no one else has ever attempted as exhaustive a survey as that.
Brilliant marketing - if nothing else - he WAS an ad copy writer.
And he printed my letter in that issue - my first published audio writing.
Maybe someday it'll be worth as much as the first issue of Marvel comics - with which it has much in common now.
I thought that the original 'Audio Critic' was pretty good. I knew Peter Aczel then, by phone, and we had productive conversations. I even contributed some TIM measurements to the magazine.
The later 'Audio Critic' is awful. It has attacked people, like me, without any real feedback or evidence in many cases. It is a double-blinders 'bible'.
I have been criticized by the 'Audio Critic' without any feedback from me, attacking my design philosophy. When I substituted an open loop follower to replace an IC (the best that I could find at the time), I was raked over the coals as being some sort of fool. Actually, I was helped, because I found that the manufacturer of the amp was not using the high current rating 'V' of the part that I had specified, and had neglected to tell me of the change. The bias resistors that I originally specified were specified for the V, and the use of Gr (low current) 'starved' the follower and it then distorted more than my original measurements came up with. A courtesy call to me, would have gotten me on to the problem from the get-go, rather than having to be berated in the magazine for something that I had no direct control over.
This is the difference between 'Stereophile' and 'The Audio Critic' If I had the same problem with the power amp, the people of 'Stereophile' would give me some feedback, before the article was published, rather than playing 'gotcha' with me.
Mr. Curl,Don't take these guys who have nothing to do but post nonsense and their aggressions towards people too seriously. God forbid you make a mistake with these guys. They are all tough behind the computer keyboard but when attacked face to face, most of them, if not all of them would cower like scared puppies. You command a high respect and by trying to defend yourself, you become vulnerable. Your work with Parasound and Audible Illusions as well as you very own Vendetta Research speaks for itself. Don't give these morons the satisfaction of trying to put yourself on their low level.
Heck! If you spell a word wrong or miss a punctuation mark, they would criticize you for not being too bright. Then it would roll over into your ability to design and build audio.
> Don't take these guys who have nothing to do but post nonsense and their aggressions towards people too seriously.>Sounds like a description of your claim above slandering HP.
> If I had the same problem with the power amp, the people of
> 'Stereophile' would give me some feedback, before the article
> was published, rather than playing 'gotcha' with me.
Not before you saw the preprint of the review in order to prepare your
"Manufacturer's Comment" letter, John. See my "As We See It" in the
forthcoming March issue for more on this thorny subject.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
JA, I would expect constructive criticism to be left into a review, but at least I could comment in the same issue on it. I would have thanked the reviewer, in my case, for pointing a problem out to me.
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