HiFi vs MidFi

I just wanted to tease you....  😁😊😊😊😊

 There is a truth in your post anyway...


My best to you....

Mid fi is any system with a lower MSRP than the one the person making the pronouncement owns

My Hi-Fi audio system cost me under 500 bucks ?

So, I propose a toast to all the “mifi” manufacturers and products that brought us where we are today. Without “midfi” we wouldn’t have gotten to “hifi”. Midfi = mid-priced/mid performance. Let’s all grab a bottle/glass of mid-priced/mid performance beer/wine/other and celebrate one of the best friends we’ve ever had.

Great post! thanks


I will only add that mid-fi gear + acoustic control is almost or near  Hi-Fi if it is not there...

High end gear minus acoustic control and without room treatment is sometimes "Worst-Fi" or at best fatiguing and in the best case very under his potential S.Q.....

So HIFI poisoned Snow White? I’m so confused

In a way "sometimes" yes....

when Hi-FI is associated with hype and money in place of the necessary acoustic solutions yes....

Thanks for your enlightened confusion....

High-Fi or Hi-End + acoustic = audio experience

The best high-end in the world is not complete without acoustic, without a room designed for it...

mahgister, not doubting your claims re totality of listening experience, but surely you would agree that some components achieve better resolution than others, that some move more air than others, and that these differences are audible?

Yes you are completely right....There is a difference between A Sansui Amplifier of the golden Era and many other amplifier not so well designed for example...

My point is ONLY that acoustic control and treatment, if they NEVER coud replace the NECESSITY for  good designed produts by themselves, will anyway by themselves give you this 50 % of the S.Q. that NO GEAR could do by itself alone....( This % is a "metaphor" conveying my message not a measurable fact but this % mirror my own experience )

Acoustic is the queen and the working gear are the 7 little working dwarves...

LoFi - hear everything gets nothing
MiFi - hear everything gets only the highs
HiFi - hear everything gets everything

😁


Acoustic science treatment and control: get anything in lo-mid-or Hi at the square power....Even get something from nothing...Get some bass not only highs...

Get more than everything because S.Q. is not highs or bass added together ...It is imaging/soundstage/timbre spectrum field done right/listener envelopmenmt/ relative source width.... 

😊

Nobody could believe, even me at first, that an under 500 bucks system could be  "near" Hi-FI than most other costly system under 10,000 bucks or even more...

It is....

Atmasphere said it right, it is the "intention" of the designer that create Hi-FI or possible audiophile experience...There is a difference between craftmanship of a designber and an industrial process...

Then sure it takes first some gear with this intentions’s designer BEHIND it...We must first buy some good gear from a designer...

If you have it, even at low price, for example a vintage Sansui amplifier in their golden era, or the best Mission speakers created, it is acoustic science that will give you the most important part of the S.Q. even at low price like for myself...

Then money is not the main meter of Hi-FI scale but the ears and acoustic science are....

Thanks atmasphere , your post says it all....

Creative designer know what is High-Fi for sure....

The intention speak through the product and with it.....

Price scale are for marketing need only....

The intention for example  behind my old Sansui Au 7700 was toward high-End sound at affordable price in 1978 (around 400 Us dollars at the times) I dont think it sound "mid-fi".... But i am not a fool and  some new product will beat it on many counts nowadays...But no mid-fi product will beat it easily....I apologize for my example but i know what this  amplifier  can do and what it cannot....

My best to you....

but the real hifidelity is inside the speakers.
No 2 speakers sound alike, All tube amps, pretty much sound the same to my ears.

And the acoustic control of a room count for nothing?

All tube amp sound the same? Ridiculous... an Atmasphere tube amplifier, a garage 1217 tube amplifier and a Berning ZOTL are the same for your ears?

No gear sound the same at all.... Be it speakers, dac, amplifiers...

Acoustic treatment and control designed for a specific speakers/system are the way to hifi....Not the gear in itself by itself alone....Electrical and mechanical controls are also mandatory...

Pick the speaker you want and associate it with the right gear and put it in a controlled room designed specifically for it and you will have Hi-FI...

Obsession with speakers or any type of gear is only that, obsession... This is right if you are an audio engineer this is called passion.... But to reach hi-fi we must know elementary acoustic and elementary mechanical and electrical facts for a rightful embeddings of the gear /system we choose...

There is no best amplifier, or best dac or best speakers.... Only different needs and trade-off....

You common sense work right...

My best to you....

Sorry. I forgot you were the champion of "the people."

I never claim to be the " champion of the people" like your exhausted irony put it on my way in your distorted manner...

Remember of what we were spoken about?

The possibility to attain Hi-fi experience at low cost OR NOT...Most people can if they know HOW...this is my point... Some sellers say here that it takes much and more money than much....

Simple... Spare your irony and try to understand....

"Most of the times in most of the cases..." -- for the ignorant. But this is a forum of audiophiles who, um, haver heard about the importance of room acoustics, ok?

i forgot to say that your post is a bit "haughty"...

When i spoke using this expression ( most of the times in most of the cases) i spoke to and for most people here constrained by budget limitation first, way more than by their alleged ignorance of price tags scale... I was speaking to normal people here not to audiophile snobs...

And for sure all people here know that acoustic is important .... But this does not erase the fact that they UNDERESTIMATED it completely in relation to gear price tag precisely because of marketing practice and reviewers encompassing all audio thread with their own "price tagging " scale, which scale evaluation is not debatable if i pick to Mr. Schroeder his own words ....

Everybody here knows or is supposed to know also the importance of mechanical vibrations controls, and decreasing the noise floor level of the electrical grid of the house...But this does not erase the fact that this fundamental embeddings control necessary to reach Hi-Fi experience are also UNDERESTIMATED and called in a misleading way by most people here and in particular by reviewers : " tweaks"; that is to say secondary artefact in relation to the possible HiFi high end gear supreme  experience...

 I debate this artificial snobbery about gear to insis on mechanical, electrical and acoustical controls, to be the way to  audiophile experience for most...

Then you mis-interpret my post for the business of criticizing me....Like usual ...

And yeah, I think Doug knows all that stuff about how important the room is AND he knows that better gear is the other half of the equation. So do a lot of others.

My point is about what could help us to create an Hi-FI experience without investing big money...

Many here says it is impossible at low cost...Mr. Schroeder say so....It is generally false...Save for extremely costly and rightfully embedded exceptional system...Then establishing a price tag scales common place characterisation is not the way to go....

And repeating common place facts about price tags has no meaning in acoustic experience...

Is a Bernning ZOTL amplifier costing 6000 dollars is less good than a 100,000 dollars amplifier? it depend of the other gear equipment but mostly also of the way the room acoustic will be coupled to the particularities of the system...

I will then let acoustic experience decide not price tag common place facts...

And dont appeal to Audio forum knowledge against my point... My experience teach me already that most audiophile trust more price tag than acoustic science sorry....

I dont doubt a second the vast knowlewdge about gear of Mr. Schroeder...

I doubt his general attitude of underestimating the essential in audio: acoustic experience.... Selling superior gear is not the same thing that giving advices about HOW to create Hi-Fi experience in our own room...Especially when the advices has no or very low cost to be implemented...

By the way acoustic science is not sinonymus with only buying costly passive material branded name treatment...

It is also designing active control devices specifically coupled to a specific speaker characteristic...This fact only is unbeknownst to most here....I know it, because i create one for myself....No one here teach me how to do it ....With discarded junk material... Anyway acoustician dont listen price tags advice but sound....

I am not interested in arguing over or debating my assessment. :)

Like a good sellers who dont want his price scale contested in any way....

Comical....

There is no scale high end price for guidance in acoustic experience....

Differences between 2 relatively good but different amplifier, even between speakers, are most of the times in most of the cases, save for extreme difference in cost and engineering in some particular case, less important generally than the change from an acoustically uncontrolled room to a controlled room designed for a specific type of speakers and system...

If you dont know that, you only are a seller....Anyway not an acoustician....


I apologize for being "rude".... But it is an audio thread and truth matter more than price scale association with sellers tags practice....

And, I agree with jjss49 that the notion this can be accomplished for peanuts is delusory. Bless the person who can live in a shack and call it a castle, but...

It could.... Nobody called my Shack a deceptive castle....😁😊

But anyway most people dont knows by experience it seems that the difference in S.Q. between MOST relatively good gear most of the times are exceeded by the powerful S.Q. impact and effect in the way the room is designed and controlled acoustically to adapt and enhance TO AND FOR a specific audio system...

Then i am bless 2 times...

It cost me nothing...

and it is real Hi-FI in my "schack" ....

Mid-fi is a name invented by gear  marketting sellers... No acoustician use it.... 

There is always better system...

The problem is not about the best system.... It is easy to buy one with the money...

The problem is how did i create one which is nearer than someone could think to the best system in the world at no cost....

It is not a question about diminishing returns...

It is a question about acoustic embeddings controls... Not merely passive treatment....active controls...

50% of the positive or negative S.Q. of a system come with the acoustic control or his lack of ...

But people are mentally programmed by the engineering industry not by acoustician....

Saying that higher cost can afford truly better S.Q. is common place fact and trivial.... What is less trivial and less common place is knowing how much acoustic can optimize and contribute to the S.Q. of ANY system ....

My system value is under 500 bucks all in all...

I listen to a million bucks system in a video on youtube and even through my system i can decipher why it was so bad because lacking acoustical control.... Incredible... But put a million bucks system sometimes in a bad room with no visible acoustic control and it could be atrociously fatiguing and repulsive even through my no fatiguing system....

I also listened to an asian owner with a million bucks system which was like a refined audio musical heaven.... Thanks to his marvellous visible acoustic control contributing for at least 50 % i am sure of that....His system for sure was audibly better than mine and more refined...But wai mine cost 500 bucks versus one million bucks...I think that this asian guy will stumble from his chair listening mine...Way less good than his but wait.....Not bad for 500 bucks....😊 I will not be surprized myself at all listening his better one....He will be surprized listening a lesser one....This is not diminushing return law it is acoustic laws...

I live very well with my under 500 bucks system acoustically well controlled...i smile if i listen anything better...You know why?

Mine is not so much behind at a cost near zero....

Then between all system there exist difference in quality , it is not debatable... It is a common place... But thinking that upgrading a piece of gear to a costly one give an Hi-FI experience is pure ignorance of at least acoustic....

By the way my acoustic treatment and active devices cost me nothing....

Acoustic could make every relatively good system Hi-Fi... Or almost....Whatever the price....

The reverse is true.... High cost system badly embedded especially acoustically may sound if not bad not at all at their potential peak...


Mid-Fi is a qualification motivated by gear sellers not acoustician....

 And yes millercarbon is right :

This is High End audio. Yes there definitely are huge differences in sound quality and yes the very best does cost more. But that doesn't mean you can't build a really impressively satisfying music system on a modest budget. I have done it. Lots of us have. I wouldn't think to call the $1200 systems I made mid-fi.