stereo review magazine

I read SR from the late '70s to the end-of-the-line. But along the way, I figured out that when it came to audio, subjectivity rules, at least in the buyer/user side of the house (though not for mfr/designer). I wasn't getting anywhere when I followed numbers & stats; but when I started following my ears, all the good stuff started to happen.

(of course it also took buckets of $$$ -- even buying used)

I had a subscription to Stereo Review mostly for the album reviews. I especially liked reading the reviews by Lester Bangs. I enjoyed the articles on the music business, and remember one feature they did on bootleg albums.

As for the constant berating of Julian Hirsch in audio forums? Get a life. He approached reviewing equipment as an engineer not as a listener or music critic. Once you understood his bias you should have been smart enough to parse the information into what was useful for you, If you couldn’t and thought Hirsch was some kind of technical god - that’s on you for being that naive and not learning by reading what he wrote and then listening for yourself and making up your own mind.
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I used to laugh out loud at some of the things he said and thought he might secretly be a gag writer in disguise. Nonetheless, some of what he said made sense and you just filtered out the drivel and retained the useful pieces of information.

I think Bob Carver proving he could make a solid-state amp sound exactly like a Conrad Johnson tube amp was at least as entertaining as anything else that happened in the mid-1980s.

Back in the time audio was really beginning to be more popular and mainstream and Stereo Review, High Fidelity and Audio were the leading magazines in the U.S., there was a revolution occurring in the industry.  In the 50's and 60's was the progression from predominantly monaural to stereo in both source and reproduction, the introduction and widespread adoption of acoustic suspension speakers and the move from tubes to solid state gear.  All of these factors played off each other - acoustic suspension speakers were power hungry, stereo required twice as many channels - contributing to the popularity of solid state amplification.  In partial defense of the reviewers of the time, such as Julian Hirsch, most transistor amps also featured much lower distortion figures than tube amps and that is reflected in the evaluations.  In terms of subjective evaluations, in many of the reviews of electronics in Stereo Review early on there wasn't one.  The entire review was measurements, performed by Hirsch-Houck Laboratories.  Speaker reviews were an exception, but as Stereo Review's Technical Editor Larry Klein wrote in the August, 1969 issue, the subjective evaluations of speakers were an amalgam of the opinions of him, Julian Hirsch and Gladden Houck.

I absolutely devoured every issue of Stereo Review, High Fidelity and Audio back then (as well as any other audio magazine I could find).  Both for the equipment reviews and the music reviews. Of the three, I Iiked Audio the best because they always had a subjective section along with the measurements.  But a huge advantage for us audiophiles (we weren't called that then) at that time was that there were a lot of audio stores around, so we could rely much more on our own ears and much less on reviews.  I worked part-time at a Lafayette Radio and Electronics but, when I wasn't there or at school, I spent more time hanging out in stereo stores or with other audio friends than doing anything else.

So I don't really feel that Julian Hirsch really did a disservice.  His and other reviewers really have to be viewed in the context of the times and context and intent of the publication.

CR is very good for all things vis a vis frequency of repair. And even if you disagree with their ratings criteria, they are more accurate for features as well. Also, I recall that Hirsch did hear a difference on one particularly bad CD player, hence proving that not all CD players were equal. 

Agreed with you about CR and frequency of repair and some other securely quantifiable measures.  I also have few reservations about the measurements they have classically used on loudspeakers their empirical validity.  I think their measurement expertise is way up there.  My reservations have always been about the weight they give to their measurements in their rankings.  Even way back when I would look at their ratings and rankings and think to myself  - wow, I've listened to speaker X that is given a score of 93 and also speaker Y that has an 87 and Y sounds a heck of a lot better to me.  And yes, later on, Hirsch-Houck Laboratories did begin got include subjective evaluations in their reports on equipment other than speakers.  I pretty much agreed with them only a little more than I agreed with CR.  These days, unfortunately, the opportunity to visit multiple audio stores to listen to a variety of gear is pretty much gone.