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

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.

Thanks for sharing the info about your father, Charles. And sorry to hear about the realities of the biz. Best wishes.

I ran in to him on an elevator at a Stereophile Audio Show in West LA in the late 80's.  The only thing I remember about the ride was the smell.  Very bad personal habits.