The term "High End" needs to die. Long live Hi-Fidelity!

When i was a kid there was a magazine called Audio....which I absorbed during the late 70’s and early 80’s.......Was an unbelievably "inviting" magazine with a great format and feel. I learned a lot from it and it supplied me with a knowledge base with which I could pursue what would become a lifelong passion....Also had the absolute pleasure of listening to some VERY Hi-Fi systems when I was in Singapore....The boutique Hi-Fi store listening rooms there were astounding.... I know what a $500k system sounds like.

Hi-Fi is what you make it.....It is more than the sum of the system’s parts.

I now have a system that sounds fantastic but didn’t cost a fortune....thanks to all the high end snobbery...... Will never stop learning and improving....

Audio magazine was great, the only U.S.A. "news stand" hi-fi mag during the 70's and beyond I had any use for. Being somewhat of an Anglophile, I like that the U.K. had a number of them.

bdp24

Audio magazine was great, the only U.S.A. "news stand" hi-fi mag during the 70's and beyond I had any use for ...

Audio was a great magazine and had an excellent staff, including Edward Tatnall Canby, Joseph Giovanelli and Bert White. Later, Dick Heyser and Tony Cordesman. Editor Gene Pitts now edits The Audiophile Voice. White was exceptionally good and very much on the leading edge of subjective audio reviewing - the very opposite of the Julian Hirsch/Stereo Review model. Even then, he slayed a few of the classic audio canards - such as that all bass is mono - and he helped expose the poor engineering and marketing behind early quad audio. He also made his own recordings and encouraged others to do the same. (Of course, few audiophiles do make their own recordings, and that often explains their enduring dissatisfaction and confusion about what at audio system can do.)

But changing the word won’t eliminate the snobs!

The term also associates with the 70s. Panel speakers and (the slow) return of tubes. In short, backwards technology.

Yes, solid-state had problems. But if more people tried to figure it out (like Quad and Pass), instead of going the easy-path of retro, audio would have advanced much faster than it did.

Horns too were not perfect. But why go backwards with flimsy membranes, that radiated all over the room ? Panels are not truly-directional as many believe.

Pearson hurt us even more, with his (totally) anti-science magazine. More known for his editorials, tiffs with reader’s letters and pictures of New York than hard audio-science.

Audio is advancing faster today because we keep moving further and further away from the 70s....