stereo review magazine

Playboy and Stereo Review, both jaw dropping and entertaining. 

STEREO REVIEW: Consumer audio and music magazine beginning in 1958 (worldradiohistory.com)

HA, ha, ha.  BOSE!  What a joke that was.

Gee, I need to see more ads of tall, white guys in Buddy Holley glasses and white lab coats telling me how good bose 901's were.  They were the joke of the industry, remain so, and to this day, simply seeing the word bose makes me cringe.

A foolish company of fools whose products are the worst of the worst and always will be.

Yeah, they sued JH, but they were wrong then and are still the industry joke as far as I am concerned.

As for SR, it was fine for the times, but clearly advertiser-driven.  Reminds me of politicians, but I digress. 

SR was fine as far as it went. It was only when Stereophile and then AS came on the scene that the general public began to see the situation as it was.with ALL the popular mags back then, NOT JUST SR.  Sure, there was some attempt by the UK mags to be more discerning, but those days all these mags were basically informative about a growing post-war industry rather than a Consumer Reports-style mag.  And hey, I love CR, but don't get me started on THEIR reviews of audio gear...good grief!  They now stick to cars and appliances and consumer advocacy, which is their sweet spot.

Cheers!

A good question is: Who among us still has a system they put together from the old Stereo Review days that they still like and listen to? Joe

Pretty sure it was Consumer Reports who was sued successfully by Bose for their review of the Bose 901, with the review stating the obvious that images were distorted. Most sound at concerts is not reflected... This resulted in CR adopting linear “sones” to represent loudspeaker “accuracy” in terms of percentage rating when fed sine wave spectra sweeps. Loudspeakers with extended bass response got killed by this analysis as the big area under the reference sone volume curve that resulted from slow roll off in loudspeaker response would lower their score. The sheer incompetence of stereo equipment review at CR soured me on their trustworthiness to review anything.

But Julian Hirsch was in his own category for misunderstanding what affected the sound of electronics. It has been commented on by others that he could not hear very well. His rough dismissal of TID and SID at the time was a true disservice to the audio community. The truth was he was limited by what he could measure, and dismissed that which he could not.

As for my audio development while I was still in high school, Thank God for J. Gordon Holt and Harry Pearson and their respective magazines. And for patient and friendly salesman at local stereo shops (none other than Bill Thalmann sold me my second pair of Advents while I was still in high school!).