ABSTRACT
Born in Budapest, Hungary, and immigrating to the United States in 1939, Aczel is a graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University, where he studied physics and mathematics as well as the liberal arts. He also did some postgraduate work at Middlebury College in Vermont and the Sorbonne in Paris. He came to the world of audio via Madison Avenue, where he had been a copywriter and creative director for two decades, with at least 25 percent of his accounts in audio at all times (Fisher, Garrard, Pioneer, among others). At the end of 1976 he left the advertising business to start The Audio Critic, a strictly objectivist audio journal devoted to measurements in depth and blind listening tests. Between 1981 and 1987 he put The Audi Critic on a back burner to start Fourier Systems, the first loudspeaker manufacturing operation to use fully computerized protocols for the design of crossover networks and bass enclosures. The company was ahead of its time in many ways, but still went out of business after 5½ years. Having resumed publication of The Audio Critic at the end of 1987, Aczel continues to publish it to this day, albeit somewhat irregularly. He is a life member of the Audio Engineering Society.
