[mikemercer]

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In relation to the OP:  I think that the internet is your friend with this.  We are so connected these days that it is much easier for someone to have their story heard.  YouTube, Twitter, Facebook (etc) are easy mediums to spread a story and I would think that any good story would attract a fair amount of listeners.  It seems you have all the ingredients for an engaging narrative. You never know, another publication might be interested in the story?

 
 
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Here Here!

I already have a home for the article gentlemen!  I'm not sure if all of you know, but I've been writing since my early days at TAS (and for TAS a short time later, but not in a long time).
Also know that I have always accredited TAS with giving me my start.  I've done so publicly in my articles ever since.  Even in competing audio bibles!
 
And I will be telling this story, as stated previously, from my perspective as a young kid: Who believed in Harry so much (and I still do, despite his health issues) I got a group of friends
to rally behind me to help him.  At one point I had one of my best friends running the mail-room at TAS (they didn't have anybody who would do it for nothin - but we were kids), and my 
ex-girlfriend Antonia answering the phones!  This was all while we worked for Pearson Publishing LTD (former parent company for TAS) - before Absolute Multimedia.
 
So this whole story takes place BEFORE the sale.  When the mag was still artful in its presentation (small, digest-sized, with ANYTHING on the cover except straight up gear pix, per
Harry's wishes).  He didn't want it to look like every other mag!
 
I also wanted to share with this thread that I just got Harry's blessing to do the piece!!
He thinks its a shame this story has never been told (how we dug the mag out of near collapse, literally - and made it sell-able).
 
My goal is also to draw the parallel between that story and what's happening here (where the demographic is generally younger than the TAS audience):
How youthful excitement energized Harry into keeping going, and he always told us that we "lifted him up".  He's so fascinating.  He'd give me and my friends
assignments!  Either movies, or records, or gear.  We'd have to take them home, and write about them.  He was the first person to tell me I could be a writer.
He believed in me.  And now, now that his magazine has turned 40 - and they left him out.  Well, the fact that nobody has told the story of the little people who 
saved that book - it's time!
 
I'm 1,000 words into it.
 
THANKS FOR ALL YOUR THOUGHTS AND SUPPORT!!!!
 
Keep em coming!
 
and I have NOTHING against TAS.  Nothing.
They do their job.
 
This is mine.

 

[Hutnicks]

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That's their problem, not mine. 

Get ready to use those buttons. First one showed up.

 

[warrenpchi]

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Quote:

That's their problem, not mine. 

Get ready to use those buttons. First one showed up.

 

  Do you mean Steve Eddy?  I completely agree with him.
 
In case I wasn't clear before, I am firmly a subjectivist.  At no time do I discount the value of measurements, as they are valid data points.  But they do not define the experience I will have.
 
PLUS, graphs can often be misleading when they are used by noobs to communicate a unit's sound signature.  This is because we all hear differently anyway... which means that over time, we will each come to interpret graphs differently.  What is a fatiguing mid-bass emphasis to one, may be nothing of note to another.  What is sibilance to one, might be nothing but a crispness in the upper mids to another.
 
So in that sense, even the objective data in graphs MUST be interpreted subjectively by us all.  I gotta run for now, but I'd be happy to delve further into this when I get back.
 
EDIT:  Waiting on someone so I have a little more time to get into this.
 
Steve, just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.  Are you saying that there are people running around here (regardless of what they proclaim themselves to be) that are trying to pass off their subjective interpretations of gear (or measurements) as objective facts?
 
If so, I don't think I've run into too many of them.  Admittedly, I do try to stay out of certain forums here (e.g. Sound Science) as I would imagine blowing a gasket quite often. 
 
I've always assumed that anything anyone says here - outside of reporting facts and citing data - is a subjective viewpoint.  This is just a given is it not?

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Steve, just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.  Are you saying that there are people running around here (regardless of what they proclaim themselves to be) that are trying to pass off their subjective interpretations of gear (or measurements) as objective facts?

 
What I'm referring to are those who will say, compare x to y, and then state that to them y sounds different than x. However they're not content with leaving it at that, but will effectively assert that there is an actual audible difference between x and y. And that's where the trouble starts as once you've said that, you're now making an objective claim (i.e. actual audibility). But when questioned or challenged on such claims, they become all bent out of shape and defensive ("What, are you saying I'm hallucinating? That I'm delusional?"). And even those who don't make such overt claims or assertions are typically operating from the same assumption.
 
These are the people I refer to not as subjectivists but rather pseudo-objectivists. A true subjectivist would not operate from such an assumption nor make such objective claims.
 
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I've always assumed that anything anyone says here - outside of reporting facts and citing data - is a subjective viewpoint.  This is just a given is it not?

 
When one makes an objective claim, they've left the subjective side of the road.
 
se

 

[Hutnicks]

Quote:

 

  Do you mean Steve Eddy?  I completely agree with him.
 
In case I wasn't clear before, I am firmly a subjectivist.  At no time do I discount the value of measurements, as they are valid data points.  But they do not define the experience I will have.
 
PLUS, graphs can often be misleading when they are used by noobs to communicate a unit's sound signature.  This is because we all hear differently anyway... which means that over time, we will each come to interpret graphs differently.  What is a fatiguing mid-bass emphasis to one, may be nothing of note to another.  What is sibilance to one, might be nothing but a crispness in the upper mids to another.
 
So in that sense, even the objective data in graphs MUST be interpreted subjectively by us all.  I gotta run for now, but I'd be happy to delve further into this when I get back.
 
EDIT:  Waiting on someone so I have a little more time to get into this.
 
Steve, just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.  Are you saying that there are people running around here (regardless of what they proclaim themselves to be) that are trying to pass off their subjective interpretations of gear (or measurements) as objective facts?
 
If so, I don't think I've run into too many of them.  Admittedly, I do try to stay out of certain forums here (e.g. Sound Science) as I would imagine blowing a gasket quite often. 
 
I've always assumed that anything anyone says here - outside of reporting facts and citing data - is a subjective viewpoint.  This is just a given is it not?

It's not a matter of agreement, its a matter of whether you want to let yet another thread go to the dogs in the endless loop of objective vs subjective debate. That is for sound science is it not?

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

It's not a matter of agreement, its a matter of whether you want to let yet another thread go to the dogs in the endless loop of objective vs subjective debate.

 
There is no debate between objectivists and and true subjectivists and I really wish people would stop framing the argument as such. The debate is between true objectivists and the pseudo-objectivists who try and pass themselves off as subjectivists.
 
se

 

[Hutnicks]

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There is no debate between objectivists and and true subjectivists and I really wish people would stop framing the argument as such. The debate is between true objectivists and the pseudo-objectivists who try and pass themselves off as subjectivists.
 
se

True Believers huh.

 
Nothing personal Steve but when I  mentioned the rift in passing it was not my intention to open this thread up to the "Great Debate". Frankly I would much rather stay on topic and hear more of the history of TAS. Lets leave to OBJ vs Sub warfare for the Sound Science forums. We can still save this thread

 

[Steve Eddy]

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Nothing personal Steve but when I  mentioned the rift in passing it was not my intention to open this thread up to the "Great Debate".

 
You did rather more than simply mention it in passing.
 

1. "You're not getting it there Warrenpeace! Everytime the O word gets mentioned they school like starving sharks and start demanding "proof" of everything under the sun.  If that happens here I will well and properly go on the warpath."

 

1. "Get ready to use those buttons. First one showed up."

 
And I'm not wishing to discuss the Great Debate as much as clarify just who the actual participants are as opposed to how it's been misleadingly framed for years.
 
Quote:

Lets leave to OBJ vs Sub warfare for the Sound Science forums.

 
Again, there is no warfare between objectivists and true subjectivists. This framing of it always reminds me of the Orwellian "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."
 
se

 

[Hutnicks]

Quote:

 
You did rather more than simply mention it in passing.
 

1. "You're not getting it there Warrenpeace! Everytime the O word gets mentioned they school like starving sharks and start demanding "proof" of everything under the sun.  If that happens here I will well and properly go on the warpath."

 

1. "Get ready to use those buttons. First one showed up."

 
And I'm not wishing to discuss the Great Debate as much as clarify just who the actual participants are as opposed to how it's been misleadingly framed for years.
 
 
Again, there is no warfare between objectivists and true subjectivists. This framing of it always reminds me of the Orwellian "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."
 
se

No further comment

 

[regnaDkciN]

Mike --
 
For what it's worth, this "middle-aged pocket-protector audiophile" just joined this site because of this thread.
 
I've been out of touch with the audio press for awhile, so it was only yesterday that I found out HP had left TAS.  Can't say I was completely surprised, but it's sad to see an overt break.  In any event, more power to you for wanting to tell this story.  If there's anything I can do to help -- which, unfortunately, is limited to a number of years of back issues of TAS while it was still in its "journal" format, plus my recollection of conversations held at CESs and audio BBSs of the past with a few people on the fringes of the story (none with HP himself), I'll be glad to share what I can.
 
Incidentally, I was concerned to see you mention that HP isn't doing too well.  More health problems?  I certainly hope he can continue what he's started at HP Soundings for many years to come...

 

[warrenpchi]

Hey Steve, okay, I gotcha. 

  It's the same phenomena that my buddy obobskivich used to label as "objectivism" - and I agree that it is, at the very least, rather annoying.

 

[Chris J]

I'd be interested to see what Mercer thinks of the wasteland that is the Science Forum?

 

[mikemercer]

Quote:

Mike --
 
For what it's worth, this "middle-aged pocket-protector audiophile" just joined this site because of this thread.
 
I've been out of touch with the audio press for awhile, so it was only yesterday that I found out HP had left TAS.  Can't say I was completely surprised, but it's sad to see an overt break.  In any event, more power to you for wanting to tell this story.  If there's anything I can do to help -- which, unfortunately, is limited to a number of years of back issues of TAS while it was still in its "journal" format, plus my recollection of conversations held at CESs and audio BBSs of the past with a few people on the fringes of the story (none with HP himself), I'll be glad to share what I can.
 
Incidentally, I was concerned to see you mention that HP isn't doing too well.  More health problems?  I certainly hope he can continue what he's started at HP Soundings for many years to come...

This MADE MY DAY.
 
Thank you!!  I do need to find two names I can't remember from back in 1995-96 when we were literally hangin' on at TAS by a thread: We had to move out of the large Pearson Publishing and fit the editorial offices into this tiny space back in Sea Cliff.  An entire editorial office that had been there for years - and only me and three friends did it ALL!  But there was a couple who were editors along with my mother Ainsley Davidson and Mike Gaughn.  I only remember the guys first name: Steve.  He has a wife.  She was Asian, but I can't remember her name!  ALL my back issues of TAS are in storage.
 
Do you happen to have the issue of TAS w/ the green alien on the cover????
 
and, the fact that you used that term (coined by my wifey Alexandra BTW) - leads me to believe you've read my stuff before??

 

[regnaDkciN]

Not exactly a GREEN alien, but an alien nonetheless -- volume 20, issue 107, july/August 1996, theme "Out Of This World Speakers." I'm pretty sure it's the right issue, since it mentions having just moved the offices back to Sea Cliff, complete with a picture of the house. Oh, and your name on the masthead (twice). I see an assistant editor named Stephen F. Rogers, and someone in shipping and receiving named Stephen Fay. What other information might you need?

Oh, and the reason I know the "middle-aged pocket-protector audiophile" line is that you used it in the initial post in this thread. I don't recall reading anything of yours beforehand, although I'm going to go back and check the archives if PFO.

 

[Currawong]

All the fun I've missed not reading Hi-Fi magazines over the years. I only joined Head-Fi because the pads on my MB Quarts had gone flat and I thought I should buy something new and different.