All the old issues of Stereo Review are online!!

I have you ever seen a pic of Hirsch's "lab"? A barely converted garage, with a work bench and measuring tools all over the place. That was his listening room! His approach to hi-fi was through his eyes, not his ears. Music was nothing more than a test signal.

This takes me way back. To see cigarette ads again......

I miss cigarette smoke in bars and clubs (some of my drumsets reek of the stuff ;-). California even outlawed smoking at the beach. Sand-huggers. Buncha guys I knew (and some I didn't) died of lung cancer: John Wicks (The Records), Paul Skelton (Wayne Hancock), Bill Pitcock IV (The Dwight Twilley Band), Levon Helm (The Band), George Harrison (some minor band).

I subscribed to Stereo Review for many years. In the mid 70' after owning a Sherwood receiver, I went with separates, a Mac C-26 and a Crown DC-300A. I couldn't afford the extra $100 or so for the matching Mac C2105 amp, so I got the Crown. 
I just looked up J. Hirsch's review on the Crown. The entire text is devoted to measurements, not a word on how it sounds. He was really focused on inaudible distortion. Interesting. 
To be fair, it was early in terms of audio reviews. I enjoyed reading the magazine back then. 
I still have the C-26 and Crown amp, I use them in my office system at low volumes. I had both of them serviced a few years ago, they still sound decent. 

Never said Julian Hirsch was a fraud. Seriously wrong, sure. Together with Stereo Review did serious damage to countless audiophiles? Without a doubt. Even today many so-called audiophiles persist with their same counterproductive measurement matters more approach. Its pure crapola and not even like many of them know this is where it comes from but there it is.

And yeah the ads and cartoons are fun. But Stereophile had those too, and without all the self-defeating rhetoric in between.

Now if you want something worth celebrating that by the way would be it. J Gordon Holt came along with the revolutionary proposition that even something as simple as wire might not sound all the same, and that the way to find out was not to measure it but to listen to it.

In doing this J Gordon Holt’s Stereophile created a whole new lexicon, industry, and indeed a movement. J Gordon Holt and Stereophile, probably more than anything else, invented the audiophile. That is history. That is something worthy of being archived for posterity.

Stereo Review died 20 years ago, and good riddance. Not that measurement doesn’t have its uses, but Hirsch and Stereo Review took it way too far, to the detriment of the hobby. J Gordon Holt and Stereophile have utterly discredited that approach. Yet remnants linger on, the ghost of Hirsch and Stereo Review haunting audiophiles to this day.

Stereo Review, RIP. Long live Stereophile!