“The Sensible Sound” magazine the ASR forum of pre-internet days?

[bagwell359]

Peter Aczel took no prisoners. If he thought a piece of gear was overrated or snake oil, he let the reader know in no uncertain terms.

True - but he undercut himself very badly when he took subscriber money (asked for long term subscriptions) to invest in a speaker (Fourier One) whose product he gave rave reviews despite by most accounts sucking (never heard it myself), and didn't publish his magazine for over two years.

 

[JeffS7444]

You are misremembering.

@Gorgonzola has got it right: Audio Critic was subjective for much of it's existence, but at some point, Peter Aczel "got science", and it's those science-minded issues which have been preserved and made freely available.

 

[Gorgonzola]

@Gorgonzola has got it right: Audio Critic was subjective for much of it's existence, but at some point, Peter Aczel "got science", and it's those science-minded issues which have been preserved and made freely available.

Thank you, @JeffS7444 .

I never subscribed to Audio Critic but only picked up the odd edition at the newstand. All the additions that I recall reading were purely subject. But now checking later editions in the archive, obviously there was a point where speakers were tested, etc.

Nevertheless I respected what I read and respected Aczel's and other reviewers' subjective opinions even when I took them with a grain of salt. Above, I mentioned a couple of instances when I acted on reviews. Clearly at no point did Aczel have any special respect for "high end", expensive equipment.

There was an extended phase of my life where I paid essentially no attention to audio. This hiatus was an era where small kid and a tight budgets distracted me, roughly 1992-2002 -- which included ALL later editions of Audio Critic where Aczel started doing testing.

Despite not catching in the Fall 2000 edition, I eventually became aware of Aczel's "10 Biggest Lies in Audio", circa maybe 2005. I remember subscribing to most of them immediately, in particular the Cable Lie and the Antidigital Lie.