Harry Pearson

Harry Hall Pearson, Jr. (January 5, 1937 – November 4, 2014), known to his readers as HP, was an American journalist, audio reviewer, and publisher who founded The Absolute Sound magazine for high-end audio enthusiasts. Pearson is considered the most influential figure in the history of audiophile journalism. Pearson is famous for his philosophy of judging the sound of an audio component on how closely it approximates the "absolute sound", which he defined as "the sound of actual acoustic instruments playing in a real space."

Early years Harry Hall Pearson, Jr. was born on January 5, 1937, in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina to Harry Pearson (Sr.) and his wife Joyce (née Welborn). Pearson lived in North Wilkesboro until his parents' divorce in 1947. After the divorce, Harry and his younger sister moved to Charlotte, N.C., to live with their mother. After completing high school in Charlotte, Harry attended Duke University. After graduating from Duke University, Harry became a newspaper reporter and columnist, writing for several prominent publications in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

In Arkansas, Pearson was an environmental investigative reporter for the Pine Bluff Commercial where he wrote a series of articles that were influential in the campaign to save the Buffalo National River. Harry left the Pine Bluff Commercial when he was recruited by Bill Moyers to become the environmental writer for Newsday in New York. In the early years, TAS accepted no advertising from manufacturers. This subjective style of audio reviewing was similar to that of J. Gordon Holt, the founder of the audiophile magazine Stereophile. Pearson has often stated that Holt served as the inspiration for him becoming an audio reviewer and starting TAS. Along with Holt, Pearson developed a new language to describe what he was hearing and thus influenced a generation of audiophiles and manufacturers in their pursuit of better sound. According to The New York Times, Pearson "laid the foundations of a philosophy and vocabulary that helped give rise to a worldwide subculture of high-end audiophiles... He wrote about recorded music with the conviction and nuance that food critics brought to haute cuisine."

Beginning in the early 1990s TAS began to experience financial and operational troubles due to mismanagement and the magazine began to struggle to fulfill subscriptions. After relinquishing control of the magazine, Pearson continued to write for TAS in a column called HPsWorkshop, which he published until his departure from the magazine in 2012. On August 31, 2012, Pearson quit TAS. After leaving TAS, Pearson co-founded an online audio journal and newsletter with his protégé Joseph Weiss, called HPSoundings. HPSoundings eventually folded after two years due to Pearson's declining health. Likewise, a negative review by Pearson could be harmful for a new or established company. Many of the leading audiophile reviewers of today, including Jonathan Valin (TAS), Michael Fremer (Stereophile, Analog Planet), Art Dudley (Stereophile), and Roy Gregory (The Audio Beat) began their career working under Pearson. According to reviewer Roy Gregory, Pearson's "real importance was as a reviewer who defined what a reviewer was, and his legacy lies in the hands of the reviewing community."

Death On November 4, 2014, Pearson died in his home in Sea Cliff, New York. At the time of his death, Pearson was in frail health following a series of heart and circulatory ailments.