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All the old issues of Stereo Review are online!!

And available here:   https://www.americanradiohistory.com/HiFI-Stereo-Review.htm

The infamous Clark amplifier test is January, 1987, if anyone wants to re-live that.  I remember reading that when it came out (I was just out of college, but, having worked at an audio shop when I was 14, was already well into the hobby).  That was when I began to be aware of how I might be suckered by appearances.

Lots of things to love or hate, but oh, the advertisements!
ahofer
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,879 posts
 
This takes me way back. To see cigarette ads again......
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,816 posts
 
I miss cigarette smoke in bars and clubs (some of my drumsets reek of the stuff ;-). California even outlawed smoking at the beach. Sand-huggers. Buncha guys I knew (and some I didn't) died of lung cancer: John Wicks (The Records), Paul Skelton (Wayne Hancock), Bill Pitcock IV (The Dwight Twilley Band), Levon Helm (The Band), George Harrison (some minor band).
ericsch
753 posts
 
I subscribed to Stereo Review for many years. In the mid 70' after owning a Sherwood receiver, I went with separates, a Mac C-26 and a Crown DC-300A. I couldn't afford the extra $100 or so for the matching Mac C2105 amp, so I got the Crown. 
I just looked up J. Hirsch's review on the Crown. The entire text is devoted to measurements, not a word on how it sounds. He was really focused on inaudible distortion. Interesting. 
To be fair, it was early in terms of audio reviews. I enjoyed reading the magazine back then. 
I still have the C-26 and Crown amp, I use them in my office system at low volumes. I had both of them serviced a few years ago, they still sound decent. 
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Never said Julian Hirsch was a fraud. Seriously wrong, sure. Together with Stereo Review did serious damage to countless audiophiles? Without a doubt. Even today many so-called audiophiles persist with their same counterproductive measurement matters more approach. Its pure crapola and not even like many of them know this is where it comes from but there it is.

And yeah the ads and cartoons are fun. But Stereophile had those too, and without all the self-defeating rhetoric in between.

Now if you want something worth celebrating that by the way would be it. J Gordon Holt came along with the revolutionary proposition that even something as simple as wire might not sound all the same, and that the way to find out was not to measure it but to listen to it.

In doing this J Gordon Holt’s Stereophile created a whole new lexicon, industry, and indeed a movement. J Gordon Holt and Stereophile, probably more than anything else, invented the audiophile. That is history. That is something worthy of being archived for posterity.

Stereo Review died 20 years ago, and good riddance. Not that measurement doesn’t have its uses, but Hirsch and Stereo Review took it way too far, to the detriment of the hobby. J Gordon Holt and Stereophile have utterly discredited that approach. Yet remnants linger on, the ghost of Hirsch and Stereo Review haunting audiophiles to this day.

Stereo Review, RIP. Long live Stereophile!
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,816 posts
 

We must be about the same age, @millercarbon. Discovering Gordon and his little digest-sized, bi-annual Stereophile in early ’72 changed my life. Seriously! I subscribed and ordered all the back issues, and after reading them all cover-to-cover bemoaned the fact that I had not discovered him and it sooner.

Harry Pearson liked to take credit for creating the "High End", only begrudgingly acknowledging that it was actually Gordon who pioneered professional, published, subjective reviewing. Gordon also knew his way around a circuit schematic, while Harry was completely technically ignorant. I witnessed Bill Johnson recounting the story of getting a call from Harry, to whom ARC had sent a new pre-amp for evaluation and review. Harry told Bill the pre was defective, but after some investigation Bill discovered that Harry had inserted shorting plugs into, not the unused input jacks of the pre, as are shorting plugs intended to be used, but into the pre’s OUTPUT jacks! Anyone that ignorant has no right to be expected to be taken seriously as a professional reviewer.

I finally saw Julian Hirsch in the flesh, at CES Vegas in the mid-or-late 90’s. He had his wife with him, and was walking the halls, looking rather sheepish and embarrassed. I got the distinct impression he was very aware of the contempt with which he was viewed by the other CES attendants, myself included.

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