As We See It

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As We See It
Wired!!!
John Atkinson  |  Jun 07, 1997  |  First Published: Jun 07, 1995  |  0 comments
Compuserve's CEAUDIO forum has been buzzing in recent weeks about audio cables. The subject even spilled over into an April meeting of the New York chapter of the Audio Engineering Society (see Wes Phillips's report in this month's "Industry Update"). Nearly two decades after Polk, Fulton, and Monster Cable raised our collective consciousness about the differences cable choice can make in an audio system, the debate still rages between audiophiles and some members of the engineering community. "High-priced tone controls" is how some engineers dismiss the subject of cables, while admitting that they can sound different. Other engineers adopt the "Hard Objectivist" line that if there are differences to be heard between cables, differences in the lumped electrical parameters of resistance (R), inductance (L), and capacitance (C) are all that are required to explain such differences.
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As We See ItJ. Gordon HoltThink PiecesHistorical
Surrounded By Space
J. Gordon Holt  |  May 29, 1997  |  First Published: May 29, 1988  |  0 comments
During the late 1950s, when high fidelity exploded into a multimillion-dollar industry, product advertisements bragged about bringing the orchestra into your living room. Apparently, no one realized what an absurd concept it was, but there are still many people today who believe that's what audio is all about. It isn't. There is no way a real orchestra could fit into the average living room, and if it could, we would not want to be around when it played. Sound levels of 115dB are just too loud for most sane people, and that's what a full orchestral fortissimo can produce in a small room.
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As We See It
Different Strokes
John Atkinson  |  May 12, 1997  |  First Published: May 12, 1994  |  0 comments
In last month's "As We See It," I examined how I decide upon ratings in Stereophile's biannual "Recommended Components" listing. This leads me to talk about who writes our equipment reports. Stereophile currently has a team of 16 active reviewers. The core are professional: J. Gordon Holt, Robert Harley, Thomas J. Norton, Corey Greenberg, and Martin Colloms. The others—Sam Tellig, Jack English, Robert Deutsch, Don Scott, Jonathan Scull, Larry Greenhill, Dick Olsher, Guy Lemcoe, Lewis Lipnick, and Steven Stone—may be enthusiastic amateurs, but they are amateurs only in the sense that they don't earn their livings from writing. I'm the team's catcher, both calling the game and keeping the stray balls from getting away. Why, then, is it this cast of characters (footnote 1) who gets to cast judgments in stone in my magazine?
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As We See It
Busts & Booms
John Atkinson  |  May 09, 1997  |  First Published: May 09, 1996  |  0 comments
"Everyone I know used to sit in front of the stereo and listen to music...Now no one I know, except for us lunatics, listens to music the way one would watch a movie on TV."—from The Audiophile Network
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As We See ItFeaturesInterviews
Stereophile's Writers on an Audio Quest
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 10, 1997  |  First Published: Feb 10, 1991  |  1 comments
One Saturday afternoon in August 1990, a number of Stereophile's writers—John Atkinson, Arnis Balgalvis, Robert Deutsch, Larry Greenhill, Robert Harley, J. Gordon Holt, Richard Lehnert, Guy Lemcoe, Lewis Lipnick, Peter Mitchell, Tom Norton, Dick Olsher, Don Scott, and Bill Sommerwerck—gathered together in the magazine's Santa Fe, NM listening room to discuss the "Recommended Components" listing that was due to appear in the October 1990 issue. To add a little Tabasco to the proceedings, JA had invited AudioQuest's main man Bill Low (above) to give a short talk on whatever subject was uppermost in his mind that weekend, to be followed by an open discussion.
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As We See ItHistoricalJ. Gordon HoltThink Pieces
Why Hi-Fi Experts Disagree
J. Gordon Holt  |  Feb 04, 1997  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1963  |  0 comments
Dateline: late August 1989. The scene: my palatial office in the Stereophile Tower. Present were the magazine's official technowizard Robert Harley, Circulation Kahuna Michael Harvey, and myself. The subject under discussion was the program for the Stereophile Test CD, launched in this issue, and Bob had been dazzling Michael and myself with a description of the sophisticated signal-processing power offered by the Digidesign Sound Tools music editing system with which he had outfitted his Macintosh IIX computer. (He had to fit it with a 600-megabyte hard-disk drive!) "It'll even do edits as crossfades as well as butt joins," enthused Bob. "Let me tell you about the crossfade I once did when editing a drum solo for a CD master that lasted ten seconds..."
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As We See It
The Right Thing To Do
John Atkinson  |  Apr 24, 1996  |  0 comments
"There are two kinds of fools: One says, 'This is old and therefore good.' The other says, 'This is new and therefore better.'"—Bob Katz
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As We See It
The Great Wall of China
John Atkinson  |  Mar 24, 1996  |  0 comments
"A newspaper can flout an advertiser...but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable asset of its existence."—Walter Lippmann, 1922, reprinted in Public Opinion, New York: Free Press, 1965.
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As We See It
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects
John Atkinson  |  Feb 29, 1996  |  0 comments
When J. Gordon Holt founded Stereophile in 1962, it was very much the outsider. Compared with the mass-market magazine of which he had been Technical Editor, High Fidelity, Gordon's Stereophile was the very model of an "underground" publication, with a publication schedule as irregular as its production values were inconsistent. Its writing was from the heart, however.
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As We See It
Is it Live? Or is it . . .
John Atkinson  |  Nov 24, 1995  |  0 comments
As someone who started out as a classically trained musician but who then stepped sideways into rock, I'm fascinated by the one music I've never played: jazz. It seems to me that the essential difference between a performance of a classical work and a jazz performance is that in the former, the musicians use their technique to breathe life into dead notes on a page, while in good jazz, the performer not only applies a similar level of technical expertise, but also has simultaneously to have all of music theory at the fingertips in order to decide what the next note should be. It is a rare musician---Keith Jarrett, for example---who can excel in both arenas.
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As We See ItHistorical
As I See It: From London to Santa Fe
John Atkinson  |  May 26, 1995  |  First Published: Aug 06, 1986  |  0 comments
From London, England, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a pretty big jump, both geographically and culturally. From Hi-Fi News & Record Review to Stereophile, however, is a mere hop; the similarities overwhelm the differences. Unlike the US, mainstream magazines in the UK have managed to keep in touch with the fact that hi-fi components sound different; to edit and to write for an ostensibly "underground" American magazine presented no major philosophical problems. (I say "to edit," but as mentioned in "The Big Announcement," Vol.9 No.3, my editing is done in harness with Stereophile's founder and guiding light, J. Gordon Holt.)
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As We See It
Perfect Sound Forever?
John Atkinson  |  May 01, 1995  |  1 comments
When some unknown copywriter coined that immortal phrase to promote the worldwide launch of Compact Disc in late 1982, little did he or she foresee how quickly it would become a term of ridicule. Yes, early CDs and players offered low background noise, a flat spectral balance, and freedom from wow and flutter. But all too often, the music encoded in the "perfect-sounding" pits seemed to have taken a vacation, leading the renowned recording engineer John Eargle to offer, in the medium's defense, that if you were to hear just one CD that sounded good, digital technology would be proved to be okay.
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As We See It
Bits is Bits, Right?
John Atkinson  |  Feb 08, 1995  |  0 comments
"Never explain, never apologize." But in this month's "As We See It," I intend to do both. First, the apology:
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As We See ItHistoricalJ. Gordon Holt
Changes of Everything
Larry Archibald, J. Gordon Holt  |  Jan 02, 1995  |  First Published: Mar 02, 1982  |  0 comments
As of February, 1982, the ownership of this publication passed to other hands. In total despair about its precarious finances, JGH accepted with alacrity an offer by Larry Archibald (an occasional contributor in recent years) to purchase the magazine. This has now come to pass, and it is because of the resulting infusion of money that you are holding this issue in your hot little hands now instead of three months from now (and that is probably being a little optimistic about the way things were).
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As We See It
Future Shock, High-End Style
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 18, 1994  |  0 comments
The future is rarely what anyone expects it to be. I still remember reading, as a child, predictions in Popular Science that everyone would have a personal helicopter by 1980. It never happened, though it sure seemed like a reasonable projection of events. Events, however, have their own agenda.
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