AS WE SEE IT

Mikey Bats 302

Issue 54 of The Absolute Sound, cover-dated July/August 1988, had arrived in my mailbox. I had been warned that this issue contained a report from Stereophile’s third hi-fi show, which had been held in Santa Monica the previous April. Although it wasn’t listed in the issue’s table of contents, I found the show report on page 186, written by Michael Fremer, who was listed on the magazine’s masthead as “Senior Editor: Pop Mix.”

I met Michael at the January 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We were both and I to . At our meeting, he had argued cogently that for our two magazines to conduct a war of words in print would be detrimental to both. I was receptive to what he said, as I strongly believed that such public squabbling renders the high-end audio segment ridiculous in the eyes of the industry at large.