stereo review magazine

Pretty sure it was Consumer Reports who was sued successfully by Bose for their review of the Bose 901, with the review stating the obvious that images were distorted. Most sound at concerts is not reflected... This resulted in CR adopting linear “sones” to represent loudspeaker “accuracy” in terms of percentage rating when fed sine wave spectra sweeps. Loudspeakers with extended bass response got killed by this analysis as the big area under the reference sone volume curve that resulted from slow roll off in loudspeaker response would lower their score. The sheer incompetence of stereo equipment review at CR soured me on their trustworthiness to review anything.

But Julian Hirsch was in his own category for misunderstanding what affected the sound of electronics. It has been commented on by others that he could not hear very well. His rough dismissal of TID and SID at the time was a true disservice to the audio community. The truth was he was limited by what he could measure, and dismissed that which he could not.

As for my audio development while I was still in high school, Thank God for J. Gordon Holt and Harry Pearson and their respective magazines. And for patient and friendly salesman at local stereo shops (none other than Bill Thalmann sold me my second pair of Advents while I was still in high school!).

I bought my first system because it was highly recommended by Stereo Review. It was a Sansui AU 717 amp, a TU 717 tuner & a Sansui cassette player. Speakers were Technics SB 8000. Damn I miss it.

I do miss the annual “Directory”.

I was a subscriber of SR in the ’60s and early ’70s. Julian Hirsch, whose column was featured in every issue, did a great disservice to the budding audiophile community of the ’60s by repeatedly promoting solid state amplification over vacuum tube electronics because the latter measured better. We know those measurements were largely meaningless. He downplayed the importance of cabling which we know to be false and he frequently repeated the mantra that amplifiers that measure the same sound the same.

I cannot think of any contribution he made to the audiophile community which in retrospect, has withstood the test of time.

The question I have in retrospect is, did he ever really listen to music or did he just sit behind his bench and make measurements. I think the latter.

What is IAR?