What does Hi-Fi Even Mean anymore?

The original goal of hifi was to reproduce live music as best as possible so holy snowflake Batman don’t get your cowl in a tizzy. 🎭 You can have whatever goal you please. It’s a free country. At least when it comes to hifi.  The hifi police are not out to get you. Stating facts is a best practice for all......nothing elite about it. Some may just do it better than others. Time for a chill pill. 💊. That or perhaps lay off the weed a bit it can make one paranoid you know.

"Good luck finding unamplified music.
Even the buskers have battery smpsy."

Piano can do. That is how I know that my system is not Hi-Fi.

Just throwing the question out there again.

@mapman

i missed your pointing out the article first time around, read it now, like it alot... i think it is terrific the journalist interviewed many important industry participants, and by and large i thought their comments were fair and accurate, reflected a great understanding of both the history of hifi and the current marketplace

reality is that unamplified music performances are fairly rare for most music listeners in this age, save for classical and some jazz, so it makes sense that the industry evolves into various versions of ’vivid portrayal’ of manufactured music that is recorded on multi track then mixed in studio...

i have been a big fan of bbc monitors since the outset, and how they strived to reproduce live musical events that the bbc back then would broadcast or record for viewers/listeners... needless to say, that particular objective makes certain tradeoffs to reproducing midband accuracy and rolling off the extremes to capture the ’hall effects’ of live symphonic music heard 'in hall' - of course this standard of reproduction is now obsolete to many... is this good or bad, i don't know... but it good to hear this sort of music even if rarely... it is useful in establishing a reference for clarity, attack with lack of edge, depth and scale of sound

It’s been said a thousand times and I agree, we all have different goals in our pursuit of a sound that we like and there really is no room for judgment of someone else’s goals. However, I think we kid ourselves sometimes and fall back on a type of relativism that is, let’s just say, self serving in order for things to align with our pereonal goals.

The question is about the term “hi-fi” and its meaning. High fidelity. I don’t particularly like the term and some may consider the use of it quaint but if the term is to be used the question has to be asked: “fidelity to what?”; and on a “high” level at that. That is why this is my favorite quote from the article:

**** Alex Munro, Brand Director at Q Acoustics

"The original proposition and purpose of hi-fi has all but gone. That is except for a hard core among audio enthusiasts, who are still making tiny incremental changes to a component audio system seeking the ultimate sound, adopting higher and higher resolution replay sources. But only those of them who attend a lot of live unamplified music have kept touch with the original aims of hi-fi. ****

First, there is plenty of live unamplified music out there and anyone who thinks otherwise is not looking very hard at all. Now, one may not like the genres represented by most live unamplified music, but that is a different story. Moreover, in order to be able to use that sound as a reference there is no getting around the fact that substantial exposure to that sound is the only way. For historical perspective remember that when the term “hi-fi” came to be the vast majority of music was, in fact, live and unamplified.

I don’t think that acknowledging the true definition of the term is elitist at all and the term is still relevant for some. Pursuit of sound that is “best” and more to one’s liking without the use of the live/acoustic reference is perfectly valid on a personal basis, but if that is the goal I don’t think “hi-fi” is the term to use.