Originally posted by J. Charles Holt
My dad's views may have seemed a little extreme, but that was because he had a narrow focus: The reproduction of symphonic music at home in such a way as to try and replicate the experience of being at the performance. Not much else mattered, because not much else had a benchmark to compare it to. This attitude confused and frustrated many people.
People would talk with my dad about his "legacy" in audio, but he honestly felt he never left a legacy behind. Stereophile lost the focus that he intended for it (and became profitable in the process). High-end audio in general became more about what stupidly exorbitant prices people would pay and less about how accurate things sounded. He was upset that people stopped trying to measure things in any sort of quantifiable way which could be related to others (he took a very scientific approach to it, as any early reader of Stereophile can attest to). Ultimately, most of what he struggled to create was lost. It's one reason why he quit audio and started to get into video, although he ended up giving up in frustration there as well. He was a purist, and the world doesn't treat them kindly.
My dad didn't care a whit about how expensive something was or how it looked, all that mattered to him was how it sounded. He used to use zipcord from a spool at Radio Shack for his speaker cable because his testing at the time showed no one could tell the difference between that and more expensive cables. That turned off a lot of people, and certainly pissed off a lot of advertisers.
I know people like JA will have some other viewpoints to offer, and they certainly spent more time talking shop with my dad than I did, so I welcome to read what they have to say over the next few months.
Thanks for everyone's comments and support.
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