RIP J Gordon Holt


J Gordon Holt passed today in Boulder, CO.
slipknot1
Stereophile has some interesting interviews, including this fascinating but curiously short one that I've quoted from below. I hope more audiophiles take some of the things he had to say to heart.

"Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me..."