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Editor's Note: John Crabbe was Editor of Hi-Fi News & Record Review when I joined that magazine as a lowly editorial assistant in September 1976. At the end of 2007, I had asked Steve Harris to interview John for Stereophile, as part of an ongoing project to create an oral history of high-end audio (footnote 1). Sadly, John passed away in December 2008—see "As We See It" and "Industry Update," in our March issue. We are publishing Steve's interview as a tribute to a man from whom I learned my craft as an audio magazine editor.—John Atkinson
"So that was a great introduction. It was all 78s still, of course. But it was lovely to fiddle around with these things and hear the different shapes and radii. So I switched right on to that—and made my own [tone]arm to go with it, eventually."
Then came two years' National Service in the army. "With a radio-type background, I was put into the REME, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and trained as a radar technician. I studied the two main types of anti-aircraft radar, one of which was the very early type, attached physically to searchlights, with aerials comparable in…
"The horn loudspeaker had been assembled for the first time in a room in that house out in Essex. We had got it working there. But then of course it had to be packed up, and we reassembled it in that tiny flat in Herne Hill. And it was there that Michael Lazenby of Wireless World came to see it, because I'd sent my article off to Wireless World—the horn thing—and it had been sitting there with them for ages. F.L. Devereux, the Editor, had said, 'Look, this can't be real, it's a papier-m‚ché make-up, don't believe it!' He'd sent Michael down to inspect it, and there it was, fully assembled…
"Once we'd moved to Link House, it was recognized that, if it's a serious magazine, the Editor can't really run it on his own. My first assistant was Frank Jones, and it was marvelous to have someone at one's elbow to help with the subediting and so on. Of course, we took across our team of outside contributors, we had the hard core of originals: Ralph West, Stanley Kelly and Jimmy Moir, and also R.S. Roberts. He was the sort of contributor who sent everything in by letter. You would speak on the phone occasionally, but you never met the man! Rather like Gordon J. King, one of our major…
How did you find time to write that while you were Editor?
"Well, it was hard bloody work! But of course I was able to use the office facilities, because it was to be published by Blandford, which was part of the Link House group. I had all the backup I needed, secretarial and everything else, all the drawings and so forth, and that eased matters. I had to do all the writing myself, and I had a family with young children, but by that time I had reasonable assistance in the office, so I could give time to the book."
1976 saw John Crabbe's first prolonged absence from the magazine…
Get Better Sound
By Jim Smith. Quarter Note Press (Cumming, GA), 2008. Paperback, 293 pages. ISBN 978-0-9820807-0-2. $44.50.
Web: www.getbettersound.com.
By Jim Smith. Quarter Note Press (Cumming, GA), 2008. Paperback, 293 pages. ISBN 978-0-9820807-0-2. $44.50.
Web: www.getbettersound.com.
Good advice is the gift that keeps on taking: The more you give it, the more people want from you. No one knows that better than Jim Smith, an experienced audio maven who doesn't have customers so much as a client list. Smith's audio career has included jobs in retail sales (for years, he and his wife owned one of the most successful high-end audio stores in the southeast), customer-service positions at Audio Research and…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: Just a few comments regarding Art Dudley's review in the July issue (p.107):
1) Get Better Sound is available exclusively from Quarter Note Press, through its dedicated www.getbettersound.com website; by calling Quarter Note at (770) 777-2095; or by e-mail at jim@getbettersound.com.
2) Included with GBS is a free addition to the manual in the form of a quarterly newsletter called (you can probably guess) Quarter Notes. It includes additional tips, plus comments by knowledgeable manufacturers (not about their products, but about getting…
HDMI is the invention of the Devil. I grant that the Devil is very smart—he has put on a single cable both hi-rez audio and video, and paid tribute to the gods of industry by incorporating obligatory content protection. However, he has confounded the rest of us by using a connector that, while it relies on friction to maintain physical contact, has so little friction that the cable connector can be easily displaced from or misaligned with the chassis connector. The traditional audiophile predilection for heavy cables is, in this case, actually counterproductive—exerting just a bit of torque…
Last but not the least is the Blue Echo Solutions hd EZ lock, which firmly locks a conventional HDMI cable to the chassis socket ($20/pair). Installation of this gadget was a bit fiddly, and required manipulation of small parts in tight quarters. However, while it permits the replacement of cables (with a hex key!) and can itself be removed, the hd EZ lock is not intended for quick and casual cable swapping. Conversely, it did afford the most firmly secure HDMI connection, while still giving me complete freedom of choice in cable selection. This I like.
In fact, I like every one of these…
Scrolling through the menus on the neptuneEQ's display (no OSD or other outputs are provided) revealed that it had made relatively subtle adjustments in the outputs of my front left and right B&W 802D loudspeakers (3.5dB max, but typically within an envelope of 0.5–1dB). Slightly more adjustments had been made to the center 802D, whose lower woofer is partly obscured by an upholstered settee, and to the 804S surround speakers. I then swept a pink-noise signal around the room, both with and without the neptuneEQ in circuit, to confirm the settings. The L/R speakers had been minimally…