The term "High End" needs to die. Long live Hi-Fidelity!
I think if we are going to keep this hobby accessible, and meaning anything we need to get rid of the expression "high end." In particular, lets get rid of the idea that money equals performance.
Lets get rid of the idea that there's an entry point to loving good sound.
HiFi is the aim of all Audiophiles I’ve always felt that we all want High Fidelity sound and that High End was a term we used to describe the equipment we needed to attain that sound. I don’t think high end equipment needs to break the bank, be esoteric or unobtainable; high end describes to me that it was designed with purpose and care to recreate music the best way the designer choose to.
A person can be passionate about high fidelity and not necessarily have the money to buy high end components. I was that person for many years with a buy it once, but it right attitude. I did not settle on one component in my set up and wouldn’t trade a piece for anything at this moment even though there is equipment and components at 10 times the cost. We should encourage anyone who is interested in better sound reproduction. . .
I have come to believe that the term “high end” is an accommodation to those who would spend extra money, time and effort to attain a sound that is appealing to them, where as the term “high fidelity” existed for the purists for whom the quest to accurately replay what’s encoded in the recording.
**** It is shrinking because we are making less communal investments in music appreciation and education. Thus, fewer people believe music is a worthwhile "investment" of their time or their money or both. The music is what matters and because fewer people value music, fewer people are attracted to pursuing "quality" audio equipment to faithfully reproduce the sound of music. ****
Why does anyone care about what anyone else spends on anything? I suggest considering the following guidelines: (1) Spend your own money how ever you want; (2) Resist the temptation to sit in judgment on others who spend differently than you do--either more than you or less than you; and (3) Call the hobby whatever you want so that it reflects how you view the hobby. I understand OP's reasoning, I just don't think it accurately reflects cause and effect. IMO audio equipment enthusiasm isn't shrinking because of terminology. And it isn't shrinking because potential new adherents are becoming convinced they can't afford it. It is shrinking because we are making less communal investments in music appreciation and education. Thus, fewer people believe music is a worthwhile "investment" of their time or their money or both. The music is what matters and because fewer people value music, fewer people are attracted to pursuing "quality" audio equipment to faithfully reproduce the sound of music. That includes the DIY segment. I would argue that the Asian audio market has traction because that part of the world still values music education and invests in it.
jsautter...I don't think you got the gist of my post...obviously a good system can be obtained by paying for a new Boulder or D'Agostino "Relentless" amp, $40,000 cables, or any number of things in the range of precious hifi stuff...but a simple example of how not to is maybe my $1,200 Dennis Had Firebottle amp...is a Kondo Audio Note at maybe 30 grand a "better" sounding amp? Maybe to somebody it is, but based on my enjoyment of the Had amp I seriously doubt anything comparable is worth 30 times the cost, or is even "better" sounding in any way. My system does sound "sublime," and hey...I saved 400 grand!
In general, I agree with Eric. When I first became interested in Hi-Fi home stereo, back in the mid to late 70s, the term High End Audio was loosely used, referring to audio systems, speakers and components, that were above and beyond (in terms of sound and performance) than the common all-in-one rack systems of the day. My goal then, as it is today, was to build a musical and engaging system, synergistic with its environment and my budget. I had subscriptions to "Stereo Review", Stereophile" and The "Sensible Sound" magazines and enjoyed much, the reviews and articles, but as the reviews became more like sales pitches for ridiculously priced audio components, I gave them up. It seems now, that "High End" applies more to the very high $$$ price affixed to audio gear than it does to its real value or performance. When I can, I still enjoy auditioning new components and speakers and experiment with upgrades and tweaks from time to time, but, In all, I'm very pleased with my system - whether or not it qualifies as someone's idea of high end - it works for me.......Jim
Or you can use years of experience to identify the more expensive components that are actually worthwhile and create a system that sounds sublime. Truth is that there are no "victims" in either scenario.
I like the term "hifi" and use it frequently, and although I'm lucky at this stage in my life to be able to afford pricey stuff, I've always felt that there's a lot of reasonably affordable (a relative term really) brilliantly designed components that embarrass the so called "high end" stuff and sound beautiful. Besides, it's more fun to use the experience accumulated from years of hifi fun to assemble a world class sounding gear heap from less "precious" (and sometimes "previously owned") components, and compare it to a multi buck system someplace (usually a local "audio salon") and note that, yeah man, my gear pile sounds better (with the obvious advantage of it being in my house where I can dial it in)...more fun, way more fun.
I dont like saying I am in the "High End Audio" business at all. It denotes a social location. Fook that. So Ive been using HiFi for about 10 years now, the only thing I run into is people that use the word "HiFi" to mean sterile sounding neutered music. The lifeless crappy sound, you know ... And lemme tell ya , there is no "End" to anything we do..lol
Much of the so-called High-End is to blind listening tests what New Clothes were to the Emperor! Suits you sir! Indeed.
How many times have we all heard the same tired excuses at shows when the audience response has been rather muted?
“It’s these hotel rooms”, or maybe “it’s the humidity”, or even the poor recordings to blame etc etc.
Let’s face it when you can pick up a pair of Harbeth M40.2s for £11.5k and a Technics 1200G for a little over £2.5k, it might be worth asking exactly just how high end do you really need to go?
Buy what you like, but when "High End" = "severely colored" you can't convince me that should be the universal reference.
It is not universal for sure and wouldn't it be a hoot to get these guys to do double blind testing in a purely neutral non-seller environment and see what prevails. If coloration of music is the paramount concern a free audio editing program called Audacity allows you to tailor to suit.
Here is a true story of snobbish attitude and the result ... He was distraught because the guys on Audiogon had
convinced him he could not have a real system unless he spent 80G or
more.
I've never read any such advice on Audiogon, so I'm going to have to consider this little story just fanciful fiction.
... the buyer spent $1,500 on a set of used Klipsch pro gear and stated they
easily beat the $80,000 B&W speakers he had been dreaming of that he
could not afford.
"I think if we are going to keep this hobby accessible, and meaning
anything we need to get rid of the expression "high end." In particular,
lets get rid of the idea that money equals performance
" Absolutely true and add to that some of us even get our hands dirty building things you can't buy unless you put some sweat into it.
Here is a true story of snobbish attitude and the result. I was on my way back from Wichita on a Saturday with a load of KPT-456's. I had a guy call me up about a set of Chorus speakers I had listed and we got to talking. He was distraught because the guys on Audiogon had convinced him he could not have a real system unless he spent 80G or more. He had heard of Klipsch but never paid much attention because he had been told they were to "life like" and not tonally pure, whatever that means. (Now the idea of too life like was bizarre to me since I figured that was what you strived for. Perfect reproduction of music and not an alteration of it to some standard.) He was looking at Klipsch out of desperation. Anyway I laughed and said show up and I will prove to you that lots of money does not have to be spent for audio bliss. I was tired but he insisted he be allowed to come over Sunday. So he shows up and I dig in the pile of speakers and get a set hooked up with crossovers and we fire them up. It was funny. Do you have any female vocalists? How about Dana Krall (or whatever her name is). He asked about the perfect examples he had been taught were the penultimate examples of pure tonal bliss or whatever the heck these guys come up with. Anyway I said no but here is this and so for the next couple of hours we played various tunes before he got a big smile on his face and he said I will take them. He was an ex drummer and I think the perfect spatial rendition of Ginger Bakers "Toad" drum solo is what did him in. You could follow the drum sticks around and it was funny to watch him as he listened. He gets them home and calls me up after an hour or so of playing and tells me how much he likes them. An hour after that I get a panicked call that everything stopped working and is there any reason those speakers might hurt tube amps? Not that I can think of is my reply. Short time later he calls back and says the wall outlet had gone out and all was well.
The idea that those that can't afford some fru fru setup are just jealous is a novel idea held by some who think money = quality and I bet they make sure you know how much they have spent if you visit them. Lots of us know better than that though.
Oh by the way the buyer spent $1,500 on a set of used Klipsch pro gear and stated they easily beat the $80,000 B&W speakers he had been dreaming of that he could not afford. Never did ask what they were since I had a similar experience with $24,000 B&W speakers at HiFi Buys in Nashville,Tn. Went there to ask about a DAC one day and the sales guy insisted I sit in the showroom and listen to these babies sing! Well I had a set of La Scala Industrials sitting on a set of KP-480 subs and a grand total of maybe $1,400 in the set. Looking at the "Please do not touch our $1,000 Diamond Tweeters" sign as he fires these things up. He leaves the room no doubt waiting for me to be overwhelmed and returns in a short time. It was pathetic and I did not have the heart to tell him how lousy those B&W's were.
A rose by any other name is still a rose, "High End" has been around for a long time, and nothing will change.
I see a new reality; fewer people can afford high end, so they want to change the name to "Hi-Fidelity". If that makes your rig sound better, it sounds good to me.
Rok, I liked all your submissions; Gene Harris the best, but I don't want to change the subject of this thread.
Your comment in regard to Stereophile and Stereo Review tracks with the subject of this thread. There was also the magazine "Audio"; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_(magazine), it quit in the year 2000.
Neither of those magazines was strictly "High End" as are Stereophile and TAS. but both "high end" magazines are still around; I wonder why?
I subscribed to "Stereo Review" for decades; so long that I felt as though Julian Hirsch was a member of my family.
"Audio" was the most informative; I designed the crossover for my custom speakers (with the help of an engineer) based on information from "Audio".
At that time my rig consisted of components Julian Hirsch had reviewed. It wasn't until about 1990 that I got into the Hi-end; that was when brick and mortar high end emporiums still existed, they opened up a new world for me. Although quite expensive, it was a leap above what I already owned.
My thesis is that this is all related to the incomes of the people who subscribed to these magazines. Believe it or not, while some in the high end are very well off, the bulk of the people I saw frequenting those emporiums were people with good solid jobs who budgeted more than most on audio equipment.
Since those high end emporiums are no more, I relate that to so many of those good solid jobs being no more, which leaves those who are truly well off left for the high end.
I argue that the reverse is true. First, you'd have to list out all the specifications you are talking about. Next, you would have to show that they and only they are responsible for what we hear. Lastly, the quality of desirability would have to be ascribed to each.
In addition, the amplifier/dynamic speaker interaction is complex. You'd have to not only gather these specifications for the amp and speaker, but for the total system.
Don't get me wrong, specifications and measurements are important, but science stagnates and becomes something else when we assume we've measured all relevant parameters. Over and over in the course of science, and especially medicine, this has proven to be hubris.
That’s
a Strawman argument that human hearing differences are greater than
differences in specifications. First and foremost is humans can often
agree on what differences between components or cables or speakers are,
so their hearing must be fairly similar.
There was a time I would have been inclined to agree with this, but that was before the Yanni/Laurel illusion.
O-10, Good to see you also. These always put a smile on my face. Hope they work for you. Be sure and give a listen to the Jon Batiste CD, 'Hollywood Africans'. Great from start to finish. Heir Apparent at Lincoln Center? You heard it here first.
That’s a Strawman argument that human hearing differences are greater than differences in specifications. First and foremost is humans can often agree on what differences between components or cables or speakers are, so their hearing must be fairly similar. Second, the room itself defines what a component or cable or speaker will sound like. And the system under test also defines differences that are heard by humans. Also, frequency response per se is probably not as big an issue for audiophiles as say, dynamic range.
@coffmanlabs, “Other experiments have noted that the huge frequency non-linearity of human hearing greatly outweighs spec measurements--and that on a person-by-person basis.”
The obvious conclusion being that our hearing differences are greater than the differences in the sound of the equipment we are listening to.
Your point about “Live music should always be listened to (a lot) by designers.” is one that’s regularly touted as a means of establishing some kind of reference point in this sometimes maddeningly abstract pursuit of ours. However the fact that we all hear differently again will have a large bearing as to what we think is correct.
Your post reminded me of reading about the work of one Alfred Tomatis. I recall reading of his results of his fascinating analysis of Caruso, and how hearing loss (or damage) gave him that unique voice. I think that one of his conclusions was that you can’t sing (or speak) that particular frequency that you cannot hear.
Perhaps ultimately if we care about fidelity to the source, and I’m not sure anyone really does, despite what they might say, then we just have to stick with spec measurements. We humans are just not linear creatures and will all have deficiencies of some degree at various frequencies. And probably aren’t even aware of them.
Thanks again for reminding me of some of the fundamental basics. Far too easy to keep going around in circles, isn’t it?
Rok, old buddy I've missed you! I still have many issues of "Stereo Review" that I read with warm feelings of a glorious past; especially the cartoon.
I no longer subscribe to "Stereophile" because the times are long past when I could afford the equipment they review. TAS sent me a letter almost giving their magazine away, but I'm too old to be a dreamer, so I dropped it in the trash.
Whenever I listen to "Mingus", I think about you because I know you're somewhere doing likewise.
Unfortunately, I no longer have much time for chit chat; too busy dealing with reality.
It's good to know that you're in the land of the living.
roxy54" It wasn't a command, just a question seeking opinions."
Actually it was not a question at all it was a statement but I will not embarass you about this because it is very possible that English is not your native language which is also the case for me and it can be a very difficult language to master you should re-read the OP and the headline and you will probably see what I mean.
The difference between high end and high fi is your bank account; one is thousands of dollars higher than the other. Kind of like the difference between "Stereophile" and Stereo Review; one is "high-end" while the other was hi-fidelity.
Those who can no longer afford "high end", wish the term would just die, but that wont make your "lo-fi" sound any higher.
I will use whatever vocabulary I feel is proper, appropriate, and fitting and will state that it is not for others hear to limit, restrict, or prevent others from expressing what they think, feel, and believe!
I breeze past discussions on here that sound like they are of particularly good hearing and for all to stay tuned on what they think next . Get over yourself . Dont care . I’m not sure what to call myself . I have alot of gear. Mostly older 70s -2000s mcintosh and jbl , i buy it ,I put it together it sounds fantastic . I dont buy into these ridiculous priced items . I think people arent all that bright spending into the law of diminishing returns. Maybe you should have bought land ? Its odd to me to have bragging rights over stuff like that when quite obviously nobody cares.
At the end of the day, your ear is really the only reliable personal testing tool. I have designed many, many amps of every type and have never found electrical measurements of distortion, IM, etc, useful except as a first cut to make sure you are designing in the right direction and have not made a gross mistake. The completion of designs always involved multiple listening sessions with musicians and music lovers to zero in on the best options and tradeoffs. Very seldom did the final choices agree with the 'best' measured specs. The only exception to this rule was in the bass response area--best reproduction there was almost always in agreement with listening tests.
This is not actually surprising. Experiments in listening back in the 50's, for example, determined that a very small amount of high frequency hiss improves the perceived enjoyment of the audio experience. (Say hello to Vinyl!) Other experiments have noted that the huge frequency non-linearity of human hearing greatly outweighs spec measurements--and that on a person-by-person basis. Ihave an acquaintance in New Zealand who has a million dollar sound system that is absolutely terrible. Every component was bought on the basis of reviews and price, and it is almost non-listenable. He, nevertheless, is very happy with his system and loves to talk about the price of each element while playing the music.
One final observation: Live music should always be listened to (a lot) by designers. The trap is to go for esoteric things that can be tested, like the best design for hearing percussive wood blocks, and so on. As a violinist and orchestra player I was very familiar with the sound instruments and even different specific instruments played by the masters. Pinchas Zukerman played my violin once, and I knew exactly what his Strad sounded like. Thus, when I designed I sought to reproduce the 'true' live sound experience--which is definitely NOT the same as designing by spec.
@jonnie22, a plausible argument but are you sure that,
“Audio is advancing faster today because we keep moving further and further away from the 70s....”?
I would argue that it’s more of a merry go round. What comes around.. goes around. I don’t believe that there can be any advance until the recording industry decides that recording fidelity matters.
Currently there is no indication that fidelity matters more today than it did back in the fifties. Recordings today benefit or suffer from far more jiggery poker than they ever did back in the days of those wonderful ‘50s Capitol recordings. Fidelity is not even an issue today, it’s all about effect.
So you can play your mainstream music on any million dollar system you want but all you’ll hear better are what effects were used.
For most purposes, as things stand, chasing audio fidelity is a fools errand. True mainstream audiophile quality recordings are desperately thin on the ground, as any visitor to a show will readily discover.
The term also associates with the 70s. Panel speakers and (the slow) return of tubes. In short, backwards technology.
Yes, solid-state had problems. But if more people tried to figure it out (like Quad and Pass), instead of going the easy-path of retro, audio would have advanced much faster than it did.
Horns too were not perfect. But why go backwards with flimsy membranes, that radiated all over the room ? Panels are not truly-directional as many believe.
Pearson hurt us even more, with his (totally) anti-science magazine. More known for his editorials, tiffs with reader’s letters and pictures of New York than hard audio-science.
Audio is advancing faster today because we keep moving further and further away from the 70s....
Audio magazine was great, the only U.S.A. "news stand" hi-fi mag during the 70's and beyond I had any use for ...
Audio was a great magazine and had an excellent staff, including Edward Tatnall Canby, Joseph Giovanelli and Bert White. Later, Dick Heyser and Tony Cordesman. Editor Gene Pitts now edits The Audiophile Voice. White was exceptionally good and very much on the leading edge of subjective audio reviewing - the very opposite of the Julian Hirsch/Stereo Review model. Even then, he slayed a few of the classic audio canards - such as that all bass is mono - and he helped expose the poor engineering and marketing behind early quad audio. He also made his own recordings and encouraged others to do the same. (Of course, few audiophiles do make their own recordings, and that often explains their enduring dissatisfaction and confusion about what at audio system can do.)
Audio magazine was great, the only U.S.A. "news stand" hi-fi mag during the 70's and beyond I had any use for. Being somewhat of an Anglophile, I like that the U.K. had a number of them.
When i was a kid there was a magazine called Audio....which I absorbed during the late 70’s and early 80’s.......Was an unbelievably "inviting" magazine with a great format and feel. I learned a lot from it and it supplied me with a knowledge base with which I could pursue what would become a lifelong passion....Also had the absolute pleasure of listening to some VERY Hi-Fi systems when I was in Singapore....The boutique Hi-Fi store listening rooms there were astounding.... I know what a $500k system sounds like.
Hi-Fi is what you make it.....It is more than the sum of the system’s parts.
I now have a system that sounds fantastic but didn’t cost a fortune....thanks to all the high end snobbery...... Will never stop learning and improving....
If using scientific instruments to measure things such as distortion, S/N ratio, and a lot of other specs used to present products as superior to others then that's scientific. Sure, a $20K plus system would probably sound better in the same room as one costing $1K. Maybe or maybe not.
I don't think the human ear is capable of discerning minute differences if the main goal is to learn what sounds best to the type of music listened to. Kudos to those who can afford very expensive equipment. But, the question of High End vs High Fidelity has an answer that can't ever be answered.
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