This is a quite old thread and beating up on some of the pioneers has been a favorite pastime for the uniformed for much longer. At the risk of opening Pandora's box, I would like to offer a bit of home truth to the discussion. The first thing that needs to be addressed is the old saw that Julien Hirsh never wrote a negative review. What is not understood is that he along with a number of other audio engineers fought behind the scenes for many years to combat the out and out fraud that was being perpetrated by many unscrupulous manufacturers in the form of false specifications. The honest firms did not make false claims, but for every one of the honest ones there was a counterpart making exaggerated claims. He and others like him refused to give credence to the hucksters. That is why he only dealt with positive reviews. Meantime he and his colleagues eventually convinced the Federal Government to intervene by setting standards for pre-conditioning to establish meaningful amplifier power ratings, how to measure and report distortion values and so forth. If he did not have all the answers, he worked within the frame work of his age and within the limits of what was known and understood. And yes he was conservative and did not grasp new ideas readily. That does not justify the abuse heaped upon him by people who came later and don't have the perspective or knowledge necessary to offer a balanced perspective. As far as Stereo Review otherwise, the record reviews are invaluable to the record collector right up to today. The same can be said for High Fidelity. Audio, which was my favorite during it's years in publication, I find less useful today in as much as there was perhaps less emphasis on record reviews, but it is still interesting. So enough with the invective already.
