Stone: How did things change when Larry purchased the magazine?
Holt: Very early on he got disgusted with me as an editor because I was really very bad at it. I didn't really want to edit the magazine. I wanted to play with expensive equipment and write about it. So he asked me who he should bring in as editor. My choice was John Atkinson. He was editing Hi-Fi News & Record Review in England at the time. The big question was, why would he come to Stereophile? He presumably had this high-paying, cushy job in England---why would he come to the US? But I guess Larry made him an offer he…
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Stone: Have subscribers changed substantially in terms of what their interests are and what kind of people they are?
Holt: Not really---except for the fact that they're a hell of a lot more sophisticated now than they used to be. We get letters now from manufacturers and electrical engineers, and people who can write three and a half pages about the smallest imaginable corner of specialized physics as it relates to audio. Put that down to the fact that a lot of them are learning a lot from the magazine, and a lot of them are coming to the magazine from a scientific background. But back in…
Holt: Not really---except for the fact that they're a hell of a lot more sophisticated now than they used to be. We get letters now from manufacturers and electrical engineers, and people who can write three and a half pages about the smallest imaginable corner of specialized physics as it relates to audio. Put that down to the fact that a lot of them are learning a lot from the magazine, and a lot of them are coming to the magazine from a scientific background. But back in…
Stone: Do you think anyone can learn how to hear the shortcomings of high-fidelity equipment?
Holt: They do it all the time. The better the equipment you're exposed to, the more critical you become. Every once in a while you look back and say, Huh, how could I have ever liked that? I remember some years ago we had a rather expensive power amplifier in the house. I lived with that thing---I think it was the first Infinity switching amp---for several months, and I finally declared in print, "This amplifier is so good that if nobody ever makes it better, it won't matter." Well, that's…
Holt: They do it all the time. The better the equipment you're exposed to, the more critical you become. Every once in a while you look back and say, Huh, how could I have ever liked that? I remember some years ago we had a rather expensive power amplifier in the house. I lived with that thing---I think it was the first Infinity switching amp---for several months, and I finally declared in print, "This amplifier is so good that if nobody ever makes it better, it won't matter." Well, that's…
Stone: Do you find that your own recordings are very useful to you in evaluating equipment?
Holt: Oh yes. Even though they're never going to sound absolutely real, knowing exactly what the orchestra sounds like in its performing space gives me a good handle on just how close the system is coming to that sound. I don't think that's an essential reviewer's tool, but I think it's very helpful. Because, well, it depends on what a reviewer wants. I'm not necessarily looking for the same thing that some of our other reviewers are. In other words, I love the sound of live music; that, to me, is…
Holt: Oh yes. Even though they're never going to sound absolutely real, knowing exactly what the orchestra sounds like in its performing space gives me a good handle on just how close the system is coming to that sound. I don't think that's an essential reviewer's tool, but I think it's very helpful. Because, well, it depends on what a reviewer wants. I'm not necessarily looking for the same thing that some of our other reviewers are. In other words, I love the sound of live music; that, to me, is…
Stone: Do you feel that's true?
Holt: No, I don't.
Holt: No, I don't.
Stone: What are the primary reasons people feel that Home Theater's not suitable for music? Is it not high-enough fidelity for music?
Holt: That doesn't have to be the case, but all too often it is. My own experience has been, if you buy Home Theater loudspeakers, you'll end up with a system that's much worse in terms of fidelity than what you can get from a high-end audio source. I think it's because the people who design them don't really have much respect for the people who buy them. I think they figure, "Ah, these are movie…
Stone: Purists might argue that there's always some place that has the right balance so it can be done with just two microphones; you just have to find it.
Holt: Well, they're welcome to spend all the time they want looking for it! [laughs] I mean, there are certain situations where I've walked in, looked at the stage layout, and knew right off that I couldn't do it all with two mikes. That's when the mixer comes out.
Holt: Well, they're welcome to spend all the time they want looking for it! [laughs] I mean, there are certain situations where I've walked in, looked at the stage layout, and knew right off that I couldn't do it all with two mikes. That's when the mixer comes out.
Stone: Most of your recordings are done with an M-S microphone configuration.
Holt: Yeah. I've been experimenting with M-S because it showed promise of being free…
Stone: This brings us to where high-fidelity might go in the future. It seems as if it's dividing into two camps: surround-sound or Home Theater, and two-channel stereo.
Holt: That's not going to continue. When electrical recording came along, a lot of record collectors insisted that electrical recordings were no good because they didn't sound musical. The same thing happened again when stereo came along; a lot of people fought that, too, for years and years, and eventually they changed their minds or died off and their opinions didn't matter any more. I mean, try to find someone today…
Holt: That's not going to continue. When electrical recording came along, a lot of record collectors insisted that electrical recordings were no good because they didn't sound musical. The same thing happened again when stereo came along; a lot of people fought that, too, for years and years, and eventually they changed their minds or died off and their opinions didn't matter any more. I mean, try to find someone today…
"What's that noise?" Bob Harley and I looked at each other in puzzlement. We thought we'd debugged the heck out of the recording setup, but there, audible in the headphones above the sound of Robert Silverman softly stroking the piano keys in the second Scherzo of Schumann's "Concerto Without Orchestra" sonata, was an intermittent crackling sound. It was almost as if the God of Vinyl was making sure there would be sufficient surface noise on our live recording to endow it with the Official Seal of Audiophile Approval. Bob tiptoed out of the vestry where we'd set up our temporary control room…
The Music
Robert Silverman and I heated up the fax lines tossing around a number of ideas. Bob came up with three separate programs: 1) either the first or second Rachmaninoff sonatas; 2) an all-Chopin recital; or 3) a Viennese evening, centered on Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. Gradually, however, Bob's desire to record what he termed "another Romantic blockbuster" became paramount, and he decided to showcase Robert Schumann's little-recorded Opus 14 sonata—nicknamed the "Concerto Without Orchestra"—in the concert's first half. (He would include the sonata's original second scherzo,…
Robert Silverman and I heated up the fax lines tossing around a number of ideas. Bob came up with three separate programs: 1) either the first or second Rachmaninoff sonatas; 2) an all-Chopin recital; or 3) a Viennese evening, centered on Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. Gradually, however, Bob's desire to record what he termed "another Romantic blockbuster" became paramount, and he decided to showcase Robert Schumann's little-recorded Opus 14 sonata—nicknamed the "Concerto Without Orchestra"—in the concert's first half. (He would include the sonata's original second scherzo,…
The single-point Manley microphone, set to its crossed-figure-eight pattern, was the opposite of the B&Ks in that its soundstage was superbly well-defined. There was a palpably real piano image hanging between and behind the plane of the speakers, surrounded by the readily identifiable acoustic of the church. Tonally, however, the Manley mike was less accurate than the B&Ks: its upper midrange made the Yamaha sound too clanky, while its top octave was clearly boosted. If you hadn't heard the original instrument, you wouldn't be aware of any coloration; but we had heard the original…