Were you an audiophile in the 1980s and 1990s?

Oh yeah Mike, your book is already in my Amazon cart. ;-)

Before I visited Walt’s Livermore shop, I went up to Berkeley to investigate a newly-opened storefront. I can’t remember what he called his place, but it was the 1-man operation of David Fletcher, later known for the Sumiko MDS-800 tonearm and SOTA turntable. The shop was a mess, like the desk of the mad genius he was!

I also visited Sound Systems In Palo Alto, where I heard the Infinity Servo-Statics. But the owner and his one employee were such a-holes I continued my search for a great high end dealer. I found him in Walter Davies, who was not only an experienced listener, but also a trained technician. A good thing, too, as when I turned on my brand new ARC SP-3 it made a loud "POP", and I smelled smoke. Yes, the pre-amp blew a resistor the first time electricity was applied to it. Welcome to ARC ;-) .

Roger Modjeski of Music Reference fixed a lot of broken ARC amps in his lifetime, so when building his amps used parts rated for ten times the voltage they would see in the circuits in which they were employed. Bill Johnson said he built his amps to last 20 years; Modjeski said 100 years. My Music Reference amps will outlive me. ;-) TAS reviewer Dick Osher thinks very highly of the MR RM-9 Mk.2, newly-returned-to-TAS writer Mike Fremer the same of the RM-200 Mk.2. If I'm not mistaken (@clio09, you there? ;-), Roger’s favorite of his amps was the RM-10.

The Absolute Sound was an absolute revelation to me when I came across its tiny Readers Digest size corpus at a magazine stand somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. Up until then I'd been reading High Fi News/Stereo Review and Audio, and the subjective "What does it actually sound like?" focus was just plain wonderful. It didn't hurt that Harry Pearson was a first class writer.

It was only some time later that, while searching for the latest issue of the who-knows-when-it-comes-out TAS that I came across Stereophile. In any case, I've been addicted to TAS and Stereophile ever since. I love 'em. They litter the floor of  my stereo room. I feel like a heartless cad when I toss one out. To be sure, I also enjoyed searching down the British mags...reading about gear that was singularly unavailable in the U.S.

It’s informative to compare the writing styles of JGH and HP. The former’s reviews were very to-the-point, the latter’s verrryyy long, and rather "flowery". One might even characterize them as turgid (I do). When reading them I couldn’t help but think "Geez, this guy really likes the sound of his own voice."

Harry’s other writers also weren’t audio professionals, but rather dentists and lawyers with deep pockets. Just audiophiles, like you and I (except for their deeper pockets ;-). I don’t care if a review is "well written", I care about what it says, and who is saying it. Yes, I’m strongly opinionated. Is that a bad thing? ;-)

Interesting indeed to compare the writing styles of JGH and HP.

I mostly agree with bdp24’ s comments about the two writers (and their associated reviewers) on “technical” grounds (credentials?). However, I strongly disagree with the implied relative relevance and importance of their actual writing.

For me, what made HP (and TAS in general) stand out above most other audio reviewers at the time and since was, wordiness and all, his ability to write about the way that equipment was reproducing music in a way that clearly showed a level of understanding of aspects of the sound of a musical performance that most reviewers simply don’t have a very good grasp of; or choose to not write about it. A passing comment in a review about the bass of component A being tighter or a few hertz deeper than that of component B only scratches the surface of all that can be heard on a recording.

Now, HP’s thing was Classical music. He reviewed some Pop and non-Classical recordings, but to me it was obvious that Classical music was the genre that he understood best. He held subscriptions to Carnegie Hall Classical music series’ and it showed in his writing. When was the last time we have read a review that talks about the unique sound of the reverberation off the back wall of the stage when the French horns play, for instance? Or, the unique way that the sound of triangle floats above the rest of the percussion section of an orchestra. Writing about these things may seem flowery, but are real aspects of the sound of live and what can be on a recording.

I liked JGH’s writing very much, but IMO he did not write about the relationships between the performance and the sound on the same level as HP. A reader may not be interested in such things, but those are the details that give credence to the idea of “the absolute sound” and “the sound of unamplified instruments in a real space as the standard which TAS adhered to. IMO, the recent departure from this notion in the audiophile press and audio forums is unfortunate. As editor, HP shaped the “mission” of TAS in a direction that, to me, demonstrated a deeper appreciation of the more nuanced and ephemeral aspects of the sound of a musical performance as it relates to assembling an audio system than any other audio publication.

Then there were the great concert halls of the world surveys, surveys of the great pipe organs of the world, HP Suoer LP lists and much more. All this made it much easier for me to forgive HP’s tendency to be a bit of a blowhard.

Consider me a fan. I look forward to reading your book, MK.