Historical

Thirty-five years ago this month, the first issue of a new audio magazine—cover price 50 cents—cautiously made its way out of a Philadelphia suburb. Its black'n'white cover featured a chessboard adorned with tubes and XLR plugs. Its 20 advertising-free pages included a feature on how to write an ad for an audio product, which had been penned by one Lucius Wordburger, a footnote helpfully pointing out that this was the nom de plume for one J. Gordon Holt, "who wishes to remain anonymous."

"Most important." That was the phrase I used when I e-mailed the members of Stereophile's extended family of reviewers and writers to ask for suggestions when I began to compile this list. I didn't want to be more specific because I wanted to cast the net as wide as possible. But there are many factors that make an audio component "important": design innovation, sound quality, sales figures, influence on other designers, influence on the evolving market, influence on system synergy.

And I used to think our annual "Records To Die For" issue was difficult. Whew! When it came down to choosing the 40 most influential rock/pop, jazz, and classical records of the past 40 years, during which this magazine has been the most honest and enjoyable source of high-end audio journalism, my initial list contained more than 200 choices. A painful paring-down process ensued, with input from every member of the Stereophile staff.

I first became aware of the existence of Stereophile sometime in spring 1985, while working as a typesetter in Santa Fe, New Mexico. (Remember typesetting?) From far down the hall behind me I heard a big, high-pitched laugh. I turned to see my present boss guiding toward my dark typesetting cell my future boss: a very tall, balding, round-faced man with a huge grin who shambled along in loose chinos and a Hawaiian shirt in full sail.

I have been reading a lot of late. Whether it is due to the reduced appeal of recorded music owing to the ever-decreasing shelves of LPs in our local specialty record store (the owner explains that he still wants to sell LPs; it's the record companies that make it increasingly harder for him to do so with punitive returns policies and deaf ears to back orders), or the fact that it's Spring, I don't know. But the fact remains that I have recently found myself devouring a shelf-full of titles sometimes only vaguely related—horrors!—to high fidelity. Stuart Chase's The Tyranny of Words, for example, first published in 1938 and a finer examination of what came to be called semantics you wouldn't want to find, should be essential reading for anyone involved in writing articles that are still intended to communicate some meaning.

By now you've no doubt realized that Stereophile has changed its size—from 5½" by 8 7/16" to 7½" by 10¼". (All right—maybe you didn't know the exact dimensions of the change, but that's what they are.) We have Edward Chen, Publisher of Stereophile's Chinese edition, to thank for our new size. It is the same size as the Chinese Stereophile and a common size in the Far East. We've been admiring it in Chinese for the last two-and-a-half years, and we thought it would make sense in English as well.