by William Livingstone
Contributing Editor Larry Klein
The Ears of Klein
Laboratory tests are a vital part of this magazine, and in forming our opinions of a piece of equipment the editors usually want to know how it performs in the laboratory as well as in the listening room. Most of our readers take the same point of view, and for them the Hirsch-Houck Laboratory test reports are among the most interesting sections of each monthly issue of STEREO REVIEW.
While Hirsch-Houck lab tests have helped to give this magazine its identity for almost a quarter of a century, we have occasionally used other testing facilities and methods.
In August 1983 we published Laurence Greenhill's report on the results of blind listening tests comparing various kinds of speaker cable.
That report got a lot of attention.
In this issue we are publishing Ian Masters's report on comparative listening tests of several Compact Disc players, tests that were conducted for STEREO REVIEW by David Clark at DLC Design in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I expect these tests and this report will also get a good bit of attention.
As much as we rely on lab tests, we are not so wedded to them that we can't see the value of other ways of reporting on equipment. Last month we published a "user's evaluation" of the Phoenix P-250DL Surround Sound Decoder by Thom as R. Gillett, who has written a number of articles for us. We have plans for a few other such evaluations by William Burton, Ralph Hodges, Gordon Sell, and other staff members or contributors.
When I discussed beginning such a series of evaluations with Contributing Editor Larry Klein, he said, "Whenever you read a subjective evaluation of a signal processor, for example, you want to be very sure that this is not the first signal processor the evaluator has had any experience with." Right. This month we are also publishing a user's evaluation of the Fujitsu Ten stereo system for the Toyota Celica.
The user who is doing the evaluating is Larry Klein, and I want to assure you that this is not the first car stereo system Larry has had any experience with.
When I asked Larry how long he had been involved with car stereo, he told me that one of the electronics firms he worked for before he went into journalism was Delco, long before Delco teamed up with Bose Corporation to develop the Delco-GM/Bose Music System. In fact, that was before Bose Corporation was founded.
Larry said, "I've been involved with car stereo since it was car mono!" Larry has been involved with STEREO REVIEW since 1962, when he joined the staff as Technical Edi tor. In that position he played a vital role in forming policies that are still in force at the magazine. Eventually, he became Technical Director, a position he held until 1983. By that time, when he relinquished his position on the staff, he had moved to the suburbs and was ready to set up a private consulting firm. His first client, of course, was this magazine.
Although he does not come into the office every day, he still reads all technical copy before it goes into print. He is available for consultation with the editors and the publisher, and he is one of our most frequent contributors of feature articles. His Q&A column has been a valuable educational tool for many young audio journalists as well as for hundreds of thousands of readers. Larry and I are going into our third decade as colleagues, and I am prepared to say that the gold con tent of his ears is 24 Karat.
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Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)