At the end of April, Adrian Low, the proprietor of Toronto retailer Audio Excellence, emailed me. "I've been interviewing audio luminaries for some time," Adrian wrote, "partly because I am so interested in how they started, their experiences, and also to share these with fellow audio enthusiasts." Adrian told me that they match and donate all the funds they receive from these videos to the Salvation Army (footnote 1). He had just posted video interviews with Dan D'Agostino and Wilson Audio's Peter McGrath to the store's YouTube channel and asked if he could interview me.
We connected with Skype and, in the two videos embedded below, Adrian and I, along with Jan and Vilip from Audio Excellence, talk about many things connected with my 52 years as an audiophile, my 43 years in audio magazine publishing, and my 33 years at the editorial helm of Stereophile. The subjects covered include:
The conflict between my academic success in the sciences at high school and university and my passion for music, which came to a head when, at age 24, I gave up a secure job in scientific research to go on the road as a bass player with a rock band and record an album at Abbey Road.
How my career as a professional music foundered due to the fact that I was better at playing than I was at getting paid, which led to me in 1976 applying for and getting a job as an editorial assistant at Hi-Fi News & Record Review, a UK-based magazine I had been reading since putting together my first audio system.
Why, in 1986, after less than four years as the editor-in-chief of Hi-Fi News, at age 38 I gave up the success I was achieving to join the then-digest-sized, irregularly published Stereophile in May 1986, where I was to remain editor-in-chief through March 2019. In that time I oversaw a steady increase in circulation and revenue until Stereophile became the highest-circulation magazine devoted exclusively to audio and music in the English-speaking world.
On why I felt including measurements in the magazine's reviews played a role in Stereophile's growth and the correlations between measured performance and sonic character with both loudspeakers and amplifiers.
•: On the evolution of my audio system, the products that had impressed me the most over the years I worked in audio magazine publishing, and how I would allocate a budget to put together a musically satisfying system.
On my parallel career as a recording engineer/musician/producer.
And many other topics, including my list of 11 must-hear albums and the current state of the audio industry.
Finally, as I mentioned my career in scientific research above, here is a photo of me in the lab in 1972, just before I gave it up to pursue my musician career.
Footnote 1: You can see the reason Audio Excellence produces these videos here.
Footnote 1: You can see the reason Audio Excellence produces these videos here.
