Michael Fremer leaves Analog Planet

Michael is one of the very few reviewers who actually gives true insight into the sound of a product. He is not afraid to point out strengths and weaknesses. With Michael--not every piece of gear is the best ever. I will follow him at Absolute Sound but I do wish they conducted measurements.

Mikey is great but I am just going to stick with Stereophile.  I just cannot follow someone who espouses 'high end' cables.

How stupid.

I met Michael Fremer once a Music Matters open house and he was spinning disks in a room with a system that featured some extraordinarily large Wilson speakers. It sounded very good. Fremer had a prerelease and apparently ultra special pressing of Fleetwood Mac Rumors that he was very proud of and which sounded phenomenal on the SME/Lyra table cartridge combo. I came up to him after the demonstration and told him I had seen the band on the Rumors tour, that the concert far exceeded my expectations, and that this system and that special pressing got very close. He looked at me with a wry smile and said “Are you sure? I saw them in 1977 and I don’t remember any of it”. I have liked him ever since.

I encountered him at one of the exhibit rooms at Axpona 2019. I watched as he took video of what to me was an unexciting turntable set-up and narrating his thoughts for his video which most of have seen him do-he found something of interest anyway. I had just purchased my most expensive-at that time-cartridge from someone associated with the VdH room, a Crimson XGW Strad. So with it in hand, as soon as he began to walk away I could not resist asking him what he thought of my new cartridge. He said in a very friendly hyper-manner (he is definitely a Type A personality), "my only problem with VdH cartridges is that every model sounds different from the rest, you never know what you are going to get with a new design". He then moved on hurriedly to another room.

I tell this story because I think after following him for many years and having had email exchanges with him that it pretty much captures who he is-quirky, energetic, frank, and polarizing. Watch this salute to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZUd07Sfg4U Go to the 18 minute mark. where the second thing he said was, "I have news for you folks, all these years I have really hated vinyl". Almost nobody laughed and it only got more painful from there. Very awkward which again describes him.

The aspect of MF that turns me off the most is two-fold; a) he has a tendency to repeat as gospel engineering principles that someone else told him without really understanding it, and b) whether accurate or not, rumor has it that he takes more advantage of being comped gear from manufacturers than is accepted at Stereophile.