GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: The “Inverted High End Audio” ™

Post Subject: When It Was Still FunPosted by Paul S on: 4/26/2014

Back in 1962 it was still fun to try to make "real" sound from hi-fi. Oddly enough, I was soon into horns...
JGH went from (A-7) horns, to big Fultons, to mid-field monitors (Tannoys, the last time I spoke with him...), and his own version of 5.1 sound. I followed along as far as the Fultons because I either heard what he was talking about, or I thought I could hear it.

Gordon does not go into it in the shared Q/As, but he also for some time championed better recording, and he himself mostly followed his own edicts when he recorded symphony orchestras. I mention this not as an historical anecdote but because (as Gordon said, and I agree) good recording is indeed "the missing link", and problems with recordings are partly responsible for disparate efforts at sound "re"production. It's ironic to think that recording itself took such a long drop, starting about the time JGH picked up the gong, in the early 60s.

In the minds of many, JGH will be "remembered" as something like "The Father of Subjective Audio". This is actually sort of funny to me, because I know it would drive Gordon nuts! Although I am not such an empiricist, JGH certainly fancied himself as such, and he went to great lengths to codify pretty much all of his audio ideas. While he was hardly an enigma, I can see that it might be a stretch for those encountering his ideas out of context to equate the early anti-Hirsch/"anti-measurement" diatribes with his relentlessly "scientific" approach to hi-fi, including plenty of "empirical" testing and an entire "lexicon", along the lines of an Audio Esperanto, to try to keep audio discussion under control (and therefore relevant). The reader might enjoy knowing that the Art Dudley quote JGH so lightly touches on in the shared QAs was in fact a source and "cause" of much consternation and ire for Gordon, who (as far as I know) never did give up on the idea that Music could be "realistically" recorded and played back in the home.

Paul S

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