Were you able to buy it for 3 Kellogs Frosted Flakes box tops and $10?
Well
. Have no fear
. Thats not MID FI.
6 boxtops
and $50
. Now were onto something.
If youve paid enough for it to have bought a very nice new import vehicle instead
its not MID Fi
. Unless youve mismatched all the components badly.
MID FI looking back down from an Ultra Fi view point is another way to see things as well
a $30K retail system then could be thought of as mid to low fi
if only $$$ are the parameters.
As was said
MID FI is what others own
not us
regardless what it is or what it cost us, perhaps.
I don't care if it has tone controls, or the speaker wires are hard wired to the unit or the speakers themselves....
if you have to actually think for a good while about buying it
Discuss it with your spouse, Cash in on your 401K, Scheme up a way to rob an armored truck, or take out a loan or save for some decent amount of time
you sure aint going to think its MID FI no matter what!
...and if you have a 50 inch or larger plasma outfitted witha Bose soudn system... well... I guarantee those folks don't feel their rig is MID FI at all!
I know... most of my friends have exactly that!
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cwlondon..i agree, except i would add that money is involved every time someone spends it.
Also, I would suggest that in the context of the OT....high-fi "is a pejorative expression invented by audiophiles"
just saying. |
'This forum is AUDIOgon, not MUSICgon or ARTgon so I think its OK to talk about audio.'
Could have fooled me with threads of burgers, bikes, cars,
watches, drink, cigars etc etc,lol................. |
it's hifi when your cables and speaker wires cost more than your speakers, amps or source. i can hear a difference. ha |
This has been fun for me to read because I have been surrounded by "hi fi" all my life. While the thread is about "mid fi" what I think about most in reading these posts is how the definition of "hi fi" has changed among those who care about it since the time the term was first coined. I am starting a new thread about that. |
Yesterdays/yesteryears Hi-fi.When you can buy it for 10% of it's original price tag and still really enjoy it.
*I would also define it as audio gear that is two tiers down from higher-fi.
*It's a special spouse-friendly euphemism for any piece of heinously-expensive gear that can be snuck into a system and passed off as an innocuous addition that one can feign a lukewarm attitude toward. (The male equivalent to: "That old thing? Oh, that's been in the family for years, honey".)
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Cwlondon gets a standing ovation for his two responses above. Spot. On. |
If your not in financial ruins after each audio purchase , its Mid Fi . |
Not total junk just junk. |
it is a derogatory term meant to imply poor quality. |
mr tennis
i propose mid fi is indeed a derogatory termm but meant to imply a pedstrian and mass marketed nature with inferior fidelity relative to so called hi fi
mid fi may or may not be poor quality at least in the context of mass marketed merchandise
i would suggest that Denon and Yamaha in the late 70s and early 80s for example were of high quality but nonetheless mid fi
conversely i propose that garage built and potentially unstable components may be hi fi but not high quality
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a term perpetuated by salesman so they can sell hi fi IMO |
Your system is mid fi if selling it during a time of financial hardship wouldn't make a significant difference. This definition is variable as well as money has different value to different people.
In my case, I doubt I could get enough money selling my entire system to really make a significant difference unless I was getting down to not being able to afford food. A few thousand dollars would be helpful in the immediate short term, but unless the actual problem was solved I would likely choose to skip that particular step and move on.
I've never understood people selling all their stuff. My brother-in-law sold his blu-ray player a while back and likely got $20 for it. Did it really make a real difference in his finances, I doubt it. |
Mid Fi is apparent when you hear something demonstrably better by any and all standards, on a level you never thought possible. Until then, you simply won't know it until you here it. |
Mid Fi is apparent when you hear something demonstrably better by any and all standards, on a level you never thought possible. Until then, you simply won't know it until you here it.
Nailed it.
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How is mid-fi defined? In a word, measurements. As in using measurements to sell mid-fi products. High end audio products are bought and sold based on the subjective experience they provide. Mid-Fi is more based on numbers, both in how it’s marketed, and how it’s designed (cheaper). Put another way, the next time somebody is screaming for measurements in an audio discussion, if you can, find out the composition of their system; mid-fi and/or old/cheap.
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What a great question. Recall the Supreme Court Justice that couldn’t define Pornography but knew it when he saw it?
@buff nailed it pretty well I thought. And OP I would classify your system as High End.
No one I know in real life cares about audio. My 2 mid Fi HT systems in my house blow them away. I try not to show them my 2 channel system because I get tired of answering questions about cost and having them see the thousands of CDs in that room. So everyone considers the mid Fi stuff an Uber extravagance that sounds better than anything they could imagine. Every now and then I find myself enjoying the mid Fi so much I think “Yeah, if I had to, I could live with this”. Until I listen to the same recording on my HE system.
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Just happened to have this button on display in my room.
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@mahler123 I wish you would have confirmed the status of my system as hifi 11 years ago as I could have been happy and not upgraded :-)
I know have a Pathos Classic One amplifier, a modified (though budget) DAC, and even some audiophile approved audio connects. Look at me go!
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I have your Pioneer Elite player I think (it was for SACD and DVD-Audio). It had some sort of FireWire connection so that if you had the matching Pioneer AVR, the combination, while being mid Fi, was superb. If you wanted to play a movie you had to disconnect the FireWire and connect HDMI so eventually I just added a cheap Sony BluRay in that system and used the Pioneer for music only. After more than a decade I upgraded the AVR and lost that proprietary FireWire link and used HDMI for the multichannel music from the Pioneer player. It still sounded very good but some of the magic was gone
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See if this photo holds....
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