Where does mid-fi end and hi-fi begin? What one man or woman sees as hi-fi is only mid-fi (at best) to another.
The joys of mid-fi
What I’m writing about here applies to classical music but might have parallels in other music too. I’ve brought this topiic up in different ways before.
Years ago when I was blissfully ensconced in mif-fi, I could easily compare different performances of the same classical work with the confidence that the sound quality would be essentially the same. There would be no issues of soundstaging, detail, et al that would make it hard for me to compare. It was easy to judge a performance on its own merits without complicating factors. Now, it’s almost impossible to assess a performance without placing SQ into the mix. A mediocre recording might be extremely attractive due the sound alone, Conversely, a very good performance might be shunted aside as “unlistenable.”
Oh, for the good old days of mid-fi! 😁
Showing 3 responses by immatthewj
Yes, @ghdprentice , but I have a little bit of an idea of what gear your system is put together with, and I can only think that it must reproduce quite a bit of sonic detail. How do you feel about listening to subpar source material (be it CDs or LPs) via your system? |
@ghdprentice , you and I are listening in way different ball parks; for example, I know that your speakers cost more than my entire system would MSRP for. And I have seen pictures of your room. With that out of the way, even though it is not the minute detail and etc that you listen for when you play a LP or a CD, if your system was not capable of reproducing that and much more (such as the reproduction of sound stage and imaging and the air surrounding a solo) would you miss all of that and would it still suck you into the performance the way that I am sure it currently does? |