Holt worked as an editor and critic for
Audiocraft and
High Fidelity magazines in the mid-1950s through the early 1960s, and wrote numerous articles and reviews on
amplifiers,
receivers,
turntables,
tape recorders, and other
high-fidelity sound 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, Massachusetts. 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 of 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. "JGH" (as he referred to himself in print) was often skeptical of wildly successful audio components such as
Bose speakers, and often created controversy with passionate reviews and articles on a variety of technical subjects. The high-end audio movement exploded during the 1970s, with manufacturers such as Audio Research,
Magnepan, Infinity, and many others finding great success among well-heeled customers during the decade. After a move to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Holt constructed an elaborate listening and audio testing room in his home, he spent the decade covering such cutting-edge developments as
Dynagroove,
Quadraphonic sound,
magnetic tape formats, and
digital sound, and also reviewed hundreds of audio components. Holt also developed a vocabulary to describe subtle differences between audio components, using terms like "warm" or "harsh" to describe different characters and tonalities. (Holt later wrote "The Audio Glossary", which clarified and defined many of these terms for the benefit of audiophiles and enthusiasts.) By the late 1970s,
Stereophile's own success led to business difficulties, chiefly in getting the magazine distributed 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 Petersen Publishing in June 1998. The success of
Stereophile in the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired New York writer & reviewer
Harry Pearson to start a rival publication,
The Absolute Sound, which quickly became a very influential high-end magazine. Pearson, who was an avid admirer of Holt's early work, has stated that he started
The Absolute Sound because he wanted to "prompt Gordon to more consistent production of his own [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.
TAS 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,
LaserNews, a newsletter intended to cover the emerging
home video industry of
VCRs,
laserdisc players, and
large-screen television technology. He was unable to interest the
Stereophile management in video-related topics, and kept the magazine going until about 1990, where he folded it due to ongoing business and distribution problems.
Stereophile belatedly started a video-related magazine in 1994,
Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, which continues online as
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. Holt frequently expressed bitterness that the high-end audio business refused to embrace
double blind testing, which he was convinced would legitimize the scientific process of evaluating sound quality, for example stating in 2007 that "As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal." Holt resigned from
Stereophile in 1999 to pursue freelance writing, but remained an active participant in the
Audio Engineering Society and other industry organizations. ==Death==