(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."