User:Jcharlesholt/J. Gordon Holt

Justin Gordon Holt (19 April 1930 – 20 July 2009) was an audio engineer and the founder of Stereophile magazine, and is widely considered to be the founder of the "high end" audio movement, which promoting the philosophy of judging sound quality by subjective tests, generally with "cost no object" sound components, including loudspeakers, turntables, amplifiers, and other devices.

Early Years
Holt was born in North Carolina, and adopted when he was four years of age. His biological parents are unknown, as the records of his birth and adoption were lost in a fire. The only he was ever told about his parents were that they were "Irish musicians." His family moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1934 and stayed there through World War II, returning to the U.S. in 1947 when he was seventeen. During his years in Australia his mother worked as the head of the local Red Cross, and his father worked for a textile company.

Family
Gordon Married Mary Elizabeth Norton in 1964. Their first child, Alicia Darrouch Holt, was born on January 20, 1970. Their second child, Justin Charles Holt, was born on April 18, 1972. The Holt family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1979. Mary and Gordon underwent a separation in 1985, with Mary and their children moving to Boulder, Colorado and Gordon remaining in Santa Fe. Mary was diagnosed with lung cancer in August of 1989, and passed away on March 20, 1990. During this time, Gordon moved to Boulder to care for her and their children, where he spent the rest of his life.

Stereophile
Holt worked as an editor and critic for High Fidelity magazine in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and wrote numerous articles and reviews on amplifiers, receivers, turntables, tape recorders, and other components. After departing the magazine over editorial differences -- what he later claimed were disputes between High Fidelity's editorial and advertising staff -- Holt founded Stereophile magazine in 1962 while living in Great Barrington, MA. The magazine quickly established a market over the next decade, expanding from a small pamphlet-sized, hand-typed booklet to issues approaching a hundred pages. Holt was one of the first audio critics to provide in-depth details on his listening environment, with details on room acoustics, microphones, and other technical matters, departing from the mass-market slant to competitors such as Stereo Review, Audio Magazine, and his alma mater High Fidelity.

Holt's engaging writing style and emphasis on audio engineering made his articles authoritative while still remaining accessible to consumers and audiophiles. The high-end audio movement exploded during the 1970s, with manufacturers such as Audio Research, Magnepan, Krell, Infinity, and many others finding great success among well-heeled customers during the decade. After a move to Sante Fe, New Mexico, where Holt constructed an elaborate listening and audio testing room in his home, he spent the decade covering such technical developments as Dynagroove, Quadraphonic sound, and magnetic tape formats, and also reviewed hundreds of audio components.

By the late 1970s, Stereophile's own success led to business difficulties, chiefly in getting the magazine distributed on on a regular schedule, which created a myriad of financial problems. Holt sold the magazine to businessman Larry Archibald in 1982 for $5,000 (paid in fifty $100 bills), who expanded the magazine, hired a large staff, and eventually increased Stereophile's circulation to 60,000 readers by the late 1980s. The magazine was sold to Emap Publishing in 1998.

The success of Stereophile in the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired New York writer & critic Harry Pearson to start a rival publication, The Absolute Sound, which quickly became a very influential high-end magazine. TAS (as it was called) embraced the so-called "subjective audio" philosophy, which placed an emphasis on the sound of components as a system, eschewing the technical measurements used by Stereo Review and other mass-market magazines. Absolute Sound and Stereophile were arguably the Time Magazine and Newsweek of the high-end audio industries throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and both thrived on highly-critical reviews, editorials, and articles which tended to polarize readers and advertisers.

Holt tried to start a new publication in the late 1980s, Home Theater, intended to cover the emerging home video industry. He was unable to interest Stereophile publisher in video-related topics, and kept the magazine going until about 1990, where he folded it due to ongoing business and distribution problems. Ironically, Stereophile belatedly started three video-related magazines in the late 1990s and 2000s: Home Theater (no relation to Holt's newsletter), Home Theater Design, and Ultimate A/V.

Holt occasionally wrote reviews for both Stereophile and Absolute Sound in the 1990s, and was a frequent visitor to the annual Consumer Electronic Shows throughout the decade.

Death
J. Gordon Holt was well known for his smoking, and smoked two-and-a-half packs a day starting when he was seventeen. He was diagnosed with tonsil cancer shortly after his wife's death in 1990, and had a successful surgery shortly thereafter, although he continued to smoke believing that the cancer was likely to kill him anyway. Ten years later he was diagnosed with emphysema, which took his life on July 20, 2009. He died at home with his daughter and son present.