Another Audiophile obituary

Sad to hear of the passing of Peter Aczel. His publication "The Audio Critic" threw down the gauntlet against the Subjectivists - Harry Pearson's TAS and J.Gordon Holt's "Stereophile". Aczel was an Objectivist who believed that listening alone was inadequate for reviewing audio equipment. A component that measured bad would sound bad.This approach was first used by the esteemed British publication " HiFi News" in 1956. So the combination of listening + measurements yielded the truth of a component's musical accuracy.                    Aczel was an early supporter of the superiority of digital over analog recording and playback. He found no difference in sound quality between a Sony Discman and a Theta DA converter.His playback system included Boulder electronics and Quad 63 speakers.                                                                         We the intelligent music listeners will miss you, Peter!

With the good comes the bad.....he had an ownership stake in a speaker company that coincidentally received a rave review in his publication without disclosure of the relationship.   He later solicited existing subscribers for a long term subscription renewal at an attractive price.  He subsequently published a few more issues, then disappeared, taking all of the subscriber funds with him.    I think he later tired to resurrect the Audio Critic, without compensating previous subscribers.  

Well all this talk goes to show what happens when you die. They sell your equipment give the opinions about you and talk about you before the dirt under you settles then forget about you the next day. Everybody has their own angle. Enjoy the music everyone before you are dead and gone! 

R.I.P Charles Threatt and David Baskin. Both of you could be hell at times but you both had damn good ears! 

Most people don't know this, but over the past couple of decades, Peter suffered from severe hearing loss.  Like many people of a certain age, he literally could not hear.  You didn't get to see that in print.  While he did have his fans, following Peter Aczel would be the audio equivalent of the blind leading the blind.