J. Gordon Holt

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As We See ItJ. Gordon Holt
45 Years of Stereophile
John Atkinson, J. Gordon Holt  |  Nov 10, 2007  | 
It was 45 years ago this month that the first issue of Stereophile, just 20 pages in length, went in the mail. It had been founded by one J. Gordon Holt. Gordon had been technical editor of High Fidelity magazine in the 1950s, and was tired of being asked to pander to the demands of advertisers. "I watched, first with incredulity and then with growing disgust, how the purchase of a year's advertising contract could virtually insure a manufacturer against publication of an unfavorable report," he said in a 1974 article looking back at those dark times. And if a company didn't buy advertising, they didn't get reviewed at all. The Stereophile, as it was then called, was Gordon's answer to audiophiles' need for an honest, reliable source of information. "Okay, if no one else will publish a magazine that calls the shots as it sees them, I'll do it myself," he later wrote.
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J. Gordon HoltStand Loudspeaker ReviewsSubwoofer Reviews
Genelec Studio Monitor 1031A loudspeaker & Studio Monitor 1092A powered subwoofer
J. Gordon Holt  |  Apr 11, 2019  |  First Published: Aug 01, 1999  | 
Which loudspeakers do audio professionals listen to? And why should we care? After all, it's not as if recording engineers are the kind of refined, sensitive, music-loving types who read Stereophile. As much as they may love music, many audio pros appear only to view the original sounds of musical instruments as raw materials to be creatively reshaped and manipulated. (Okay, there are exceptions. But recordists who care about the sounds of real instruments usually record them in real acoustic spaces rather than in studios, and use as little signal processing as they can get away with.)
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J. Gordon HoltMiscellaneous
Rocktron CS 5.2.5 Circle Surround decoder
J. Gordon Holt  |  Dec 12, 2019  |  First Published: Aug 01, 1998  | 
Editor's Note: Published in 1998, this was the final review written by Stereophile's founder, the late J. Gordon Holt in the 37 years he was associated with the magazine. In it he expounds on his passion for experiencing recorded music in surround sound. Our continuing focus on two-channel products and recordings was one of the reasons Gordon eventually resigned, in August 1999.—John Atkinson
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Linaeum Model 10 & Center-Channel loudspeakers
J. Gordon Holt  |  Apr 11, 2019  |  First Published: Jul 01, 1997  | 
666linneumIt's been a long time since we've seen a really new tweeter design. Only five basic types have ever been developed: cones, domes, panels, ribbons, and ionic plasmas. And the most recent of these—the long-defunct DuKane "blue-glow" Ionovac—was introduced 40 years ago. Since then, tweeter development has been more evolutionary than revolutionary, a series of refinements that has made them more efficient, more reliable, and smoother and more extended in response.
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FeaturesJ. Gordon HoltThink Pieces
Lights in a Box?
Steve Guttenberg, J. Gordon Holt  |  Jan 03, 1996  | 
"Without content, television is nothing more than lights in a box."
---Edward R. Murrow.
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Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
KEF Home THX Loudspeaker System
J. Gordon Holt  |  Nov 26, 2012  |  First Published: Jan 01, 1996  | 
KEF's Home THX speaker system is somewhat unusual in that it includes an active subwoofer. (While most Home Theater subs are powered types; it's just that few THX models are.) Although powered speakers have never enjoyed much popularity with American audiophiles, they can yield better results than the mix'n'match approach because each amplifier/driver combination can be optimized.
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Tube Preamp ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Audio Research SDP1 multichannel music processor
J. Gordon Holt  |  Aug 25, 1995  | 
For those of us who have succumbed to the enticements of surround-sound for music, Audio Research's SDP1 is both vindication and cause for rejoicing: vindication because surround-sound's acceptance by such an ultraconservative, uncompromising company as ARC will give it a respectability in the high-end community that it never enjoyed before, and cause for rejoicing because someone has finally done music surround right.
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Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Atlantic Technology System 250 home theater loudspeaker system
J. Gordon Holt  |  Jul 18, 2013  |  First Published: Apr 01, 1995  | 
When something called "high fidelity" assumed fad status during the 1950s, many manufacturers climbed on board by the simple expedient of adorning their last year's product with a high fidelity label. The Home Theater bandwagon is a little harder to jump on, because loudspeakers for use with television sets require something "ordinary" stereo speakers don't: magnetic shielding (or, more accurately, magnetic cancellation). Without it, placing the speakers within a few feet of a large-screen set does psychedelic-type things to the color (footnote 1). However, adding magnetic shielding, usually in the form of a second magnet glued to the rear of each loudspeaker's motor magnet, is the only thing that some loudspeaker manufacturers change before slapping a Home Theater label on last year's stereo speakers.
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HistoricalJ. Gordon Holt
Surround Sound: High Tech Meets the Beast Within Us
J. Gordon Holt  |  Feb 05, 2019  |  First Published: Jan 01, 1995  | 
It's a tense moment during a suspense thriller. A cannibalistic serial killer has escaped from a maximum-security detention unit and eluded capture for long enough to work up a healthy appetite. Two small children are playing hide-and-seek in an overgrown lot behind their home.
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J. Gordon HoltMiscellaneous
Sony DTC-2000ES DAT recorder
J. Gordon Holt  |  Sep 20, 2013  |  First Published: Nov 01, 1994  | 
Introduced nearly eight years ago as the first recordable digital format for consumers, DAT both failed to appeal to its target market and was blocked from formally entering the USA for four years by the RIAA, who feared for the copyright of its members' recordings. However, the DAT medium was enthusiastically snapped up by professionals and semiprofessionals, who found its combination of reliability, CD-compatible signal format, and editing ease ideal for mastering. Sony currently offers a small range of consumer models, from the diminutive Walkman-sized TCD-D-7 DATMan to four-head cassette-deck–sized machines for the so-called "prosumer": amateur recordists who make pin money taping local concerts. The DTC-2000ES is Sony's latest entry (footnote 1).
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ReferenceFeaturesJ. Gordon Holt
Space...the Final Frontier
J. Gordon Holt  |  Mar 17, 1994  | 
High-end audiophiles are space freaks---we relish the warmth and spaciousness of a fine, old performing hall almost as much as we do the music recorded in it. But my attendance at a series of orchestral concerts held last summer brought home to me---as never before---the sad fact that our search for the ultimate soundstage is doomed to failure: we're trying to reproduce three-dimensional space from a two-dimensional system, and it simply can't be done.
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ReferenceJ. Gordon Holt
Sounds Like? An Audio Glossary
J. Gordon Holt  |  Jul 29, 1993  | 
Subjective audio is the evaluation of reproduced sound quality by ear. It is based on the novel idea that, since audio equipment is made to be listened to, what it sounds like is more important than how it measures. This was a natural outgrowth of the 1950s high-fidelity "revolution," which spawned the notion that a component, and an audio system as a whole, should reproduce what is fed into it, without adding anything to it or subtracting anything from it.
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As We See ItJ. Gordon Holt
I Say It's Video!
J. Gordon Holt  |  May 08, 2005  |  First Published: Jun 08, 1993  | 
A couple of months back (March 1993, p.7), I wrote that as far as I was concerned, video was television dressed up in fancy dress, thus there was no place for coverage of the medium in Stereophile. As the magazine's founder, J. Gordon Holt, has been a committed videophile for many years, I sat back and awaited a reaction from him. One was not long coming. I am running his response as this month's "As We See It" feature.—John Atkinson
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Sony CDP-X779ES CD player
J. Gordon Holt  |  Mar 08, 2018  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1993  | 
Sony's first CD player, the much-maligned CDP-1 (reviewed in Vol.5 No.10), did all the things we'd been promised from CD except deliver perfect sound. It met CD's incredible claims for frequency range and linearity, harmonic and intermodulation distortion, and signal/noise ratio, yet—despite my own initial enthusiasm for it—it proved ultimately to be a disappointing-sounding player (footnote 1). Its sound was rather hard and grainy, and quite spectacularly uninvolving to listen to. But considering that it was the first of its kind, it was a good start despite its many sonic shortcomings (footnote 2).
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Shahinian Diapason loudspeaker system
J. Gordon Holt, John Atkinson  |  Oct 09, 2005  |  First Published: May 09, 1993  | 
Richard Shahinian has been offering loudspeakers to music lovers for more than 15 years. I use the word "offering" here in its strictest sense, because Dick has never "sold" his products—by pushing them. Indeed, he is probably one of the worst self-promoters in the business. If we think of "soft sell" in the usual context of laid-back and low-pressure, then Shahinian's approach would have to be called "mushy sell."
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