OBJECTIVE VS SUBJECTIVE

One disagrees with J. Gordon Holt at one’s peril. Although he’s no longer here to defend himself (which he could do quite frighteningly), having left these realms for one in which there are no distortions and the music from the harps is always gloriously in tune, there are many who will troll you even after all the bridges have fallen.

For those who magazine, he was the person who introduced the word ‘subjective’ to the sphere of high-end audio. ‘While it is true that a loudspeaker which measures poorly will almost invariably poor, it is equally true that speakers that measure exceedingly well often sound almost as lousy, in a purely subjective listening test, as ones that are poor. This is why, of all components, the loudspeaker is the one that must be selected mainly on the basis of how it sounds,’ he once wrote (his italics).