Michael Fremer
American journalist
Michael Alan Fremer (born 22nd March 1947) is an American music journalist, YouTuber, and voice actor from New York City, known for writing about audiophile equipment and vinyl. He is the editor of The Tracking Angle and Senior Editor at The Absolute Sound. Due to his influence within the audiophile community, he has been called the "Pied Piper of vinyl" and the "dean of audiophile writing."
Career
Fremer graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Industrial and Labor Relations in 1968 and worked as a radio DJ in Boston and New Jersey in the 1970s, when he began to write about music and audio equipment. In the early 1980s, he became a well known critic of the audio quality of compact discs and was a vocal proponent of analogue source material and vinyl records.
In 1986, Fremer was hired by The Absolute Sound as pop music editor. During the 1990s, he ran his own magazine called The Tracking Angle. For many years, he was the editor of Analog Planet and contributing editor at Stereophile and Sound&Vision. In 2017, he served as an expert witness in the Quincy Jones vs the Estate of Michael Jackson trial.
In 2022 he left Analog Planet and returned to The Absolute Sound and, along with Nick Despotopoulos and David L’Heureux, revived The Tracking Angle as a website. In 2022, he had a well-publicized spat with YouTuber and record store owner Michael Esposito regarding Mobile Fidelity's use of digital source material.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Michael Fremer” as american journalist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american journalist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q113471378. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1968, 1986 and 2017.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Michael Fremer”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Michael Fremer primary sources, Michael Fremer archive and Michael research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Michael Fremer”?
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- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Michael Fremer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.