Julian Hirsch and the Task of Audio Reviewing
Julian Hirsch (left) and Ian G. Masters tour a
Japanese factory together in 1980. Hirsch died in November.
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Several years ago, an editor asked me
to nominate a technology "personality of the year." As an audio journalist, I
had no hesitation in naming Julian Hirsch, undoubtedly the most influential audio reviewer
anywhere, and the one most vilified by the high-end-audio crowd. The Stereo Review
mainstay retired in 1998 after almost 40 years of equipment testing. Julian died on
November 24, 2003, following a long illness.
In my feature this month, I describe the founding of a
Canadian audio publishing dynasty exactly 40 years ago. When Electron magazine
moved toward audio exclusivity, the original models for the essential equipment-testing
program were U.S. reviewers such as Hirsch.
After my nomination appeared, I received a note from a
reader who identified himself as an ex-audiophile and subscriber to
"underground" audio magazines The Absolute Sound and The Audio Critic
"when I was 'addicted.'" The latter became a voice of sanity in audio
publishing, but The Absolute Sound and its main rival, Stereophile, were --
and are -- the main vehicles for bashing mainstream audio reviewing in general and Julian
Hirsch in particular. Still, even in death.
Harking back to his days as a reader of those
"rags" (his word), the reader says, "I really have to comment on Julian
Hirsch. To plagiarize Will Rogers, Mr. Hirsch never met an amp or speakers he didn't like
(especially if said manufacturer had a full-page ad after the column)."
That could have been a direct quote from one of the
audiophile magazines, and I often heard much the same thing years before I ever became
involved in audio publishing or equipment reviewing myself. For some reason, it always
referred to Hirsch, and rarely other reviewers. I suppose if journalists write such
statements often enough, readers take them as fact.
There's no need for me to defend Hirsch; he often did so
himself. But such comments suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how an audio testing
program -- or any published equipment-evaluation program -- works. I have been involved
directly for as long as practically anybody still active in the field, and I think I can
speak with some authority.
First, the ad thing: Julian Hirsch, like many reviewers,
was an outside contractor, and would have no way of knowing who was or was not advertising
in the issue containing a particular review. Products are chosen, tests performed, and
reports written months before the magazines are put together. Even staffers, who could
probably find out who's running ads if they tried, usually don't -- in most publishing
companies there's a huge gulf between the advertising and editorial people, and often they
don't even speak. I've encountered companies where they're not allowed to speak to
each other.
Obviously, if the product comes from a big company that
always advertises, the reviewer would be aware of that. And it is true that occasional
advertisers, when they learn a test is going to appear, tend to want to support it by
running an ad, but this is something the reviewer knows nothing about.
Often, however, such companies wait until the review is
published. Mainstream magazines almost never let them see the review before it appears,
and I assume that was true of Stereo Review in Hirsch's day. Its now-defunct sister
publication, Audio, used to send manufacturers copies of the factual part of a
review -- features, specs, prices and so forth -- for verification, but never the
evaluation portion of the article.
When I was editing reviews, the only time we let the maker
see the results was if they were so poor we suspected that the unit was actually
defective. On one or two occasions, with new companies, we held a review until the product
could be reworked, on the theory that we weren't there to destroy a fledgling outfit by
publishing an embarrassing review. On one notable occasion, the company said that that was
the way the product was supposed to sound, so we printed the review. It was a real
stinker.
But it is true that relatively few bad reviews make it into
print in the mainstream audio magazines. Some of the reason is the choice of what will be
tested; no one sets out to spend the money on measuring a component expected to be bad
(tests are expensive, for one thing), so the whole process is weighted toward things that
are expected to perform well.
If they don't, there are several possible responses. One
editor said to me, "we're basically in the business of recommending products to our
readers, so why would we waste paper and ink on something we know they won't like?"
There's also a sort of "multiplier effect" when
it comes to negative comments, even within an otherwise good review. A slight criticism is
likely to carry something like a thousand times more weight than any sort of praise. A
rave review can easily become a pan with a single cavil, and manufacturers have very long
memories for such things. As a result, editors watch the phrasing of negatives very
closely, with the result that the language in which they are eventually phrased can be
very wimpy.
Critics of this sort of reviewing prefer a "damn the
torpedoes" rashness, and it can make good reading. And the occasional critical review
does add something to an evaluation program's credibility, but in the real world,
reviewing is fraught with traps.
Julian Hirsch trod a very fine line, and he set a very high
standard in audio reviewing. My guess is that the vitriol that was aimed at him by a
segment of the audio community meant that he was doing things right.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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