Mar 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Paul D. Lehrman

Julian Hirsch effectively invented the field of testing commercial audio products. For more than four-and-a-half decades, he wrote some 4,000 reviews and test reports for many magazines, most notably HiFi/Stereo Review (later just Stereo Review and now called Sound & Vision).

He was fanatical about accurate lab reports, but he didn't just measure stuff: He explained why he was making the measurements and what they meant to anyone who was going to be using the thing to listen to music. While he was a strict adherent to the scientific method, he also explored in his reviews more subjective areas like construction quality and usability, the area that has since evolved into the fashionable academic subject known as “human factors.” His monthly column, “Technical Talk,” was a shining example to anyone considering technical writing as a career of how engineers should talk to non-engineers.

When Hirsch retired in 1998, his publisher established a scholarship in his name at his alma mater, the Cooper Union School of Engineering.

Send Your “Current” News to Sarah Benzuly at sbenzuly@primediabusiness.com.

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