Stereophile Article - Holt telling it like it is.

You mean that angry litany pointing fingers at everyone? I loved it and he outdoes my dad for scathing criticism which is pretty hard to do. I think he does have a serious point that Stereophile/JA and others are deaf to, which is concerned with the question of how close are we to the sound of reality as we would hear it live. Many people would just as soon not have to answer that question. It is nice to have good "appealing", musical sound as an audiophile but its nice to be working toward accuracy to the source material as well.

"Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space."

"The playback still doesn't sound 'just like the real thing.' People, let's start getting back to basics. Let's put the 're' back into 'reproduction."

"We've lost our direction....The High End in 1992 is a multi-million-dollar business. But it's an empty triumph, because we haven't accomplished what we set out to do."

Was this really the goal of all audio endeavor? I'm sure it was Holt's goal, but I wonder how many really feel the same way he does. We can only REproduce what's on the recording, which in most cases contains nothing like "the real thing".

I think his anger towards audiophiles is misdirected; he should be angry with the recording industry. But in the end, he outs himself as actually angry with the Baby Boomer generation.

The Boomers have ruined his world. No wonder he's bitter.

A couple?

I met JGH at a few CESes during the mid to late 80s. As indicated above he was a straight shooter. I liked him. Too bad his creation wound up getting hijacked by many of the wrong thinkers. IMO of course.

I cannot take Stereophile any more serious than I do TAS. It now just seems the most paid the better the sound. Do any of you really take their reviews serious at all? I would rather read the reviews here from real people that have paid good cash for their audio systems. Without advertizing dollars from manufacturer's pulling the purse strings with most reviewers.