Does anyone know where this J. Gordon Holt comes from?

@viper6: Have you read Stereophile editor Jim Austin's As We See It column in the current (May) issue? It's a good one. In the column Jim makes quite a few points, some of which you may disagree with, or perhaps not. Here are a couple of them:

".....an album shouldn't sound like live music unless it was recorded to sound like that." I have many times here made the case that Harry Pearson's ethos of the job of a hi-fi system being to make reproduced music sound as close to the sound of live unamplified acoustic music as possible---the "absolute sound"---is, simply put, a gross over-simplification. Sure, that goal is of course appropriate when any given recording was made in such a fashion as to make that even possible. But 99.99% of Pop studio recordings will NEVER sound---couldn't POSSIBLY sound---like live unamplified acoustic music. Austin goes on to say "Every album should sound like itself." The way most music is recorded, that is the only realistic, sensible way to view the situation.

Another: "Great-sounding recordings form a tiny fraction of all recorded music, and they rarely intersect with the very best music." That was one of "Holt's Laws", seen in print way back in the 1960's. Gordon said "The better the music, often the worse the sound. And visa versa." Nothing has changed in the intervening years.

Jim Austin is---in my opinion---doing quite a good job of filling John Atkinson's shoes.  

I liked JGH when he wrote for Stereophile.  His objective and mine were the same.  When I had my shop, we always brought in our instruments to compare to the recordings we were listening to on our systems.

It was how we determined, back then, that the MOST ACCURATE reproduction gear playing HIGHLY PROCESSED recordings, belonged to ARC and Magnepan.  When Mayorga came out with his Direct-to-Disc recordings, we realized we were still correct.  Now, everything had to be set up properly, and yes, this was before the "interesting" cable thing descended upon us, but no matter what speaker we played, and I had about 45 different kinds in the shop, the only ones that sounded most like the recordings were the Maggies driven by ARC gear.

I don't remember if JGH liked that gear or not--he probably did--but in MY shop, playing musical instruments--trumpet, sax, guitar (both kinds) electric piano, and snare drum--this was the most accurate system.  SOME customers did not have the room for that type of system, and of course, some disagreed, which is why we carried so many brands and models--we were running a business, not a charity--but we DID play live instruments to compare.  Obviously, this is NOT the same as a live performance, and I know for a fact that my former band sounded like garbage when the various players decided to "turn it up," but many bands are like this.  I haven't heard a live show that was any good for years, with the possible exception of Joan Jet outdoors a few years ago.  Most rock concerts today are walls of noise that I refuse to attend.  Evidently, with all the advances in sound gear, if the person running the board is deaf, you get garbage for $1500.00 a ticket.

Cheers!

Idiotic statement of Jim Austin--".....an album shouldn't sound like live music unless it was recorded to sound like that." 

Why are albums recorded NOT to sound like live music?  Deliberate distortion like this, antithetical to the live experience of reality, is merely a toy at best.  The equivalent in visual art is throwing a paint can on a canvass and calling it great art. Why would a sane person throw the price of a nice house into playback of such crappy deliberate distortion recordings?

Austin' statement is true--"99.99% of Pop studio recordings will NEVER sound---couldn't POSSIBLY sound---like live unamplified acoustic music."  These pop recordings are created mainly for teenagers to have fun with that type of music and who don't care about high fidelity.  Natural unamplified instruments sound more exciting than when they are deliberately distorted on these recordings.  The pity is that the listeners to these bad recordings and bad  pop/rock concert PA systems don't have sufficient exposure to natural sound to appreciate what I have said.

"The absolute sound" of course varies with the acoustics of the venue and seating position.  As an experienced performer, my most exciting listening has come from immersion at close distances.  Maximum detail is revealed close up, and greatest appreciation of the intricacies of the music is obtained.  Greater distances allow acoustics to cause time smearing and loss of musical detail.  Similarly, recordings with a close perspective offer more musical understanding from greater detail, than recordings with a distant perspective.  Accurate playback of both distant and close perspective natural recordings meet Harry's quest for the absolute sound, but a live experience way back in the hall has lost much of the musical detail, most severely at high freq.  I actually prefer an audio system designed for accuracy playing a closely miked recording, to the live distant experience of the natural absolute sound.  Am I inconsistent in my values?  Possibly, but the real objective is to obtain the greatest understanding of the details of the music.  This is best done with live listening at a close distance.

I was looking up something else and this turned up in my search results so I thought I’d contribute. My dad (JGH) was all about wanting to re-create the live listening experience at home, but he had enough knowledge of acoustics to know that it would never be the same as being in a concert hall (he actually wrote a textbook about the science of sound back in the 60s). As he got older he became more interested in recreating the movie theater experience at home. I remember when Tony Grimani from Lucasfilm came to our house to set up one of the first home THX systems. I remember watching Terminator 2 with the volume so loud that it knocked over his martini glass! 
 

My dad was definitely a bitter and acerbic individual, but his sarcasm and wit was appreciated by his friends. I know that one of the things that my dad was most frustrated about was that when Stereophile was sold to Pearson, Larry Archibald and John Atkinson both got extremely well paid for it and my dad got nothing. From a business perspective it made sense, as he was merely a “contributor” at that point, but he felt that Stereophile capitalized on his image without ultimately rewarding him. Keep in mind he sold the magazine to Archibald for only a few thousand dollars (paid in cash!) back in the 80s, and although he tried to start many new projects (such as Laserfile magazine—I believe Laserphile was trademarked), his lack of focus ultimately doomed them all to eventual failure. 

I think all I have left of my dad’s audio legacy at this point is a box full of audio cables and some old magazines. The rest was sold to settle his estate. I may have to sell the magazines off soon to pay my own bills, as life has gotten complicated. 

Thanks for the walk down memory lane with this thread. 

I know that one of the things that my dad was most frustrated about was that when Stereophile was sold to Pearson, Larry Archibald and John Atkinson both got extremely well paid for it and my dad got nothing.

Sorry to hear that your dad was treated this way by people who owed their positions to him, @jcharlesholt . It seems that nothing trumps money in our value system.