<font color='#000000'>I originally posted this on a thread in the Parts Express speaker building BBS. Since a front page thread on his passing hasn't been started it might be of interest here.
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Subj: Thanks to him and the old Stereo Review....
Mssg:......I was able, after a long time away from the scene, to see the present-day "high end" audio scene for the B.S. dominated cesspit it has sadly become. When I awoke from my long "audio slumber" (since the mid-70's!) and started reading nonsense about magic cables, etc., it was the levelheaded, objective technical information I remembered (if dimly sometimes) from Stereo Review that helped me see through it; admittedly, after a period of some confusion!
As a completly non-technical liberal arts type, I shudder to think how ripe for the slaugher at the hands of the high-end audio charlatans I would have been otherwise.
Oh, and as for the oft-repeated slander that Dr. Hirsch "never met a component he didn't like", it was simply Stereo Review's policy back then not to waste ink on outright turkeys. And as pointed out by another in [the original] thread, most really bad designs didn't make it off the bench. At least, it seems, not until much of the audio world took leave of its senses.</font>