Thursday, September 17, 2009

Jim Thiel and JG Holt -- goodbye

What a lousy month. First JGH (and while Stereophile did a decent job, they really should have put him on the cover this month!) and now I hear Jim Thiel has shuffled off this mortal coil. Yes life is fragile and we forget this too quickly while arguing about reproduction of music and imagining the small preferences we have among high end gear really matter enough to insult each other. Thiel was a thorough gentleman whose company embodied honest design and decent customer relations. Nothing cheap there, but everything worth the price of admission and a high commitment on his part to making you happy was added in as a freebie. Yeah, get THAT deal on the web brother!

JGH -- stories of martinis, loud curses and off-color jokes make us all smile now but that man invented the field - he also was a lot more entertaining to read than a certain pompous character who insists on running his own section in his former mag (yeah, and I'll miss him too someday). For a reminder, S'phile did gather JGH's writings here

Good bye both. In my world, there is no afterlife other than the memories you cause others to hold. In their cases, both Jim and Gordon will live a long time.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

New issues of Tone and A$$Audio online, plus VSA anniversary

Both free e-mags have new issues out for Sept: see: Affordable Audio and click on the current issue image, and TONEAudio's new issue is #23. I've no idea what happened to the Daily Audiophile but it's not been updated for some months now, which is a pity as I enjoyed it.

Today also happens to be the 1st anniversary of the Von Schweikert speaker forum I started up on Audio Circle to pull together people who own, enjoy, or have questions about these speakers. Partly the motivation was to have a place where I could ask questions since the various other forums seemed to attract crazies or agenda-driven owners of other manufacturers' products who view audio gear as an extension of sports -- you know, you can only support one team and all the others must be inferior, lucky, overpriced, overrated etc. Always wondered why some people think they can get more enjoyment out of their own gear by dismissing the enjoyment of others! But another part was to try and offer a space that was not being provided by VSA itself, a company I think of as superb on the design front but less so on the marketing side (as I suspect Albert himself would acknowledge). Anyhow, one year on we have passed 2000 postings, more than 125,000 page views and who knows how many original contributors. Join us over on Audio Circle