There is no such thing like Hi-Fi. There's only My-Fi. My own perception of what high fidelity might be or what suits my own preferences of what I like to hear. It's a well known story that everyone hearing their beloved records through monitor speakers used at studios find the sound unbearable, unforgiving and a very annoying experience. And the monitor speakers have flat response. And it's a well known story that someone called the top critics to hear 2 different hi-fi systems hidden behind curtains and they all agreed that the first system was great hi-fi and the second system was awful, only the second system was a violinist playing live the same piece. Relax and enjoy with no guilt your own system. It's as hi-fi as all the others.
Musings from old school on High Fidelity
Old interview in Stereophile of JA interviewing G Holt.
High Fidelity means REPRODUCTION with as little distorion and color as possible and a flat neutral FR within the range of human hearing that retains as much of the original source as possible. This day and age we have the ability to come close but we have chosen the path where High Fidelity means whatever subjective opinion I choose. It might be what one prefers but it isn't HiFi.Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?
Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.
Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.
Yet you achieved so much, Gordon.
I know I did, and my whole excuse for it—a love for the sound of live classical music—lost its relevance in the US within 10 years. I was done in by time, history, and the most spoiled, destructive generation of irresponsible brats the world has ever seen. (I refer, of course, to the Boomers.)
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Words have definitions, if we can’t agree on what words mean then communication breaks down. HIGH FIDELITY High fidelity is not "my fidelity " it is not whatever I want it to be. I might not like sound reproduced as accurate and distortion free as possible but that’s what it means. The equipment that can reproduce the sound it is given with as little distorion or inaudible distortion comes the closest to being High Fidelity equipment no matter the price. High Fidelity Audio is dying even though we have equipment that can reproduce music more accurate than ever before we choose to be subjectivist and declare whatever we prefer HiFi. |
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