I first heard the term “mid-fi” in the late 70s into the mid 80s whilst haunting several Houston area audio destinations that tended toward Magneplanar/Mark Levinson/Linn/Nakamichi/Acoustat/B&W/KlipschHeritage…later Apogee/Vandersteen/Stax, et al. “Mid Fi” at that time, was used to describe products from the Pioneer/Kenwood/Sony/Sansui/Technics et al strata and there were a couple of brands that sort of inhabited a grey area between mid and hi hi, notably Denon/Marantz/Sony ES series/NAD. Just an observation peculiar to those times.
What defines mid-fi versus high-end?
I’m in my mid fifties and I recall 30 years back mid-fi to me fell into the NAD, Adcom, B&K…. For high-end I considered Mac, some of the Counterpoint offerings, Cary…. so forth. I had another post going where I mentioned I acquired an Onkyo home theater receiver that retailed new for $1,100. Yet another agoner responded that it does not rate as mid-fi. We all have our opinions of course. So right or wrong here.
How do you define the parameters of high-end versus mid-if? By money range, by brand…?