Hi, Kent. Saw it on the Absolute Sound website. Johnathan Valin wrote a nice article on HP. With Harry and J G Holt gone, we are indeed in a new era. I'm not sure I like it. It's hard to point to one innovation that has improved the listening experience since the mid 1980's, except, maybe, multi-channel, which is as popular as Ebola. The only new thing I've bought recently is a Sonos streaming system - convenient and great programming, but no advance in sound realism.
When I got into this stuff in the late 1970's, High-end audio was exciting....new things were happening everyday. Nobody liked CD's until Meridian came along, and the DAC revolution turned (almost) everyone around. In the meantime, it seemed like everyone had a killer turntable....even with the monster machines being built today, I'm not sure we've equaled the sound we had in abundance in the mid-1980's.
The new TAS has an interesting section on a High-End Hall of Fame. 17 pages on audio pioneers from David Hafler to Paul Klipsch who have left us poor sots. I wonder what they would think of the audio biz today....probably not much.
