Is Hi-Fi For You?

John O'Reilly

Description

Is Hi-Fi for you? It may not be. You may never know. Unless of course, you read this little book. Do you enjoy recorded music? Should the answer be positive, we are on firmer ground. What this unique little book does is allow you to explore what better sound reproduction of your favourite music means for you. The book then provides an important guide as to how you can acquire better sound reproduction at modest cost. Should you wish for even better high-fidelity sound reproduction, costs are considerably higher. Even so, this highly readable book provides ways of achieving astonishingly fine sound reproduction for a fraction of the usual cost. And one too that the family can buy into.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 21 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800466722
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 John O’Reilly

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781800466722

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Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Acknowledgement
The assistance of Stephanie Carr at Matador in the preparation of this book for publication is gratefully acknowledged.


Contents
PREFACE

1. HI-FI IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
2. THE COST OF ENJOYMENT
3. WHAT IS HIGH-FIDELITY (HI-FI)?
4. THE KIT, THE DEALER AND THE RACK
5. LOUDSPEAKERS: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
6. BUDGETS AND A SECRET UNTOLD
7. HI-FI’S BEST-KEPT SECRETS
8. THE VINYL DEN
9. PRE-LOVED AND VINTAGE HI-FI KIT
10. A SUMMARY OF SORTS

EPILOGUE
PREFACE
Music is the staff of life. Memorable concerts, operas, dimly lit clubs and live performances spring to mind. Most of the time, however, it is to recorded music that we turn our head and ears. The source of this great music may be our laptop or smartphone. It scarcely matters since the music sounds just great whatever it is played on.

Most people, of course, are aware that this great music will sound even better were they to plug a pair of inexpensive headphones into their laptop or phone. Should you do so, it will be the start of your exploration of better sound reproduction of your favourite music. You will be amazed at how much more you will enjoy the music. Musical enjoyment is the name of the game. It really is that simple and there for the taking.

In our head, we have a highly sophisticated and delicate audio-sensory system – think of it as our ears and our brain. Our ears and brain commonly have to cope with terrible recordings and terrible playback systems of our favourite music. They do so uncomplainingly to provide us with, on the face of it, unexpected listening pleasure. What decent recordings and a decent sound reproduction system do is make our listening pleasure that much easier for our ears and brain to process. It is that simple – it sounds better, much better.

What this unique little book does is to help you along the way in your musical journey. The reader is centre stage throughout. The signposts are clear. In this listening pleasure journey, you will finally discover whether hi-fi – high-fidelity sound reproduction – is really for you.




Disclaimer : The author has no financial interests in any audio company mentioned in the text, save that he has spent a considerable amount of money on their products.


CHAPTER ONE
HI-FI IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
First of all, we need to be clear as to what hi-fi is. By hi-fi, we mean high-fidelity sound reproduction of pre-recorded speech or music. Speech might be important to dramatists, theatre buffs, and the like. For most of us, however, it is from recorded music rather than the recorded spoken word that we will gain most pleasure. We can listen to either of course. That we would wish to listen to the reproduction of that music as faithfully as possible would seem to go without saying.

But does it? A glance round the typical living room might reveal the presence of a large, flat-screen television set, quite an expensive item, and yet little visible evidence of any other sound reproduction system. None of the traditional boxes that we associate with hi-fi systems, the amplifiers and loudspeakers, will be present in the room. Certainly, nothing that our parents would have recognised. And thank goodness for that, I hear you say. Not only are these hi-fi ‘boxes’ notoriously expensive, but they can also be bulky and mess up an otherwise decent living room. Oh, and I haven’t mentioned the cables that could trip you up.

Little wonder then, that hi-fi remains the preserve of a small number of white, elderly, middle-class men of the post-Second-World-War baby boomer generation. And they are dying out; their hearing has gone. In fact, quite a number of the baby boomer generation have already expired if I can judge by the wonderful jazz record collections I have seen and purchased second hand in pristine condition. Indeed, I am mindful that will also be my own fate: to leave behind a record collection in pristine condition.

So, things might appear not to be looking so good for the pursuit of high-fidelity sound reproduction. Yet, hi-fi is a lot closer than you might think, to pick up on the chapter title. Yes, in recent years, a veritable revolution has been taking place in consumer electronics that promises to put better fidelity, if not high-fidelity, sound reproduction within immediate reach of a considerable number of people.

And what might that be? The internet. What, could you be more specific? Internet streaming. You know how you can stream films from Netflix and other internet streaming service providers on your television, laptop, computer, or smartphone. You can do exactly the same with audio or music files from other internet providers such as Spotify. But my grandchildren have been doing this internet streaming business for years. What’s new here? Bear with me whilst I give you a couple of real-life examples.

I chanced to bump into Darren the other day when he was listening to some YouTube music on his laptop. Darren is doing quite well in his new company’s sales department and sports a rather nice car out front. The headphones that he had plugged into his laptop looked very basic, and so I offered him my headphones to try out. “Okay,” he said. “And how much did the ’phones cost you?” My reply of fifty pounds was met with a pitying look. Darren was not impressed.

As it happens, Darren has a younger sister Ashley who is training to be a nurse. Ashley was also listening to some music on her laptop through headphones that looked rather better than Darren’s. I asked what the music was to get the reply, “Motown.”
I was surprised. “How did you get into that?”
“Oh, my friends are into ’60’s and ’70’s Motown at the moment. It’s great. You can dance to it. It’s got a great beat. Of course, it is just girls dancing but we love it.”
“And what is your favourite?”
“Oh, Martha and the Vandellas’ ‘Dancing in the street’ is fantastic. We never knew that there was such great music out there from way back.”
At this point, I offered Ashley my DAC-amplifier to plug into her laptop. “Try this,” I said.
“What is that? It looks like a USB stick.”
“It is called a DAC and you just plug your headphones into it. The DAC itself has a USB cable that just plugs into your laptop, like so.”
Her face lit up with delight. “That is just amazing.” Ashley was beaming. This was Motown on steroids. Taking the headphones off, Ashley looked at me and asked how much the DAC thing cost.
I replied, “Fifty pounds.”
“Does your DAC thing plug into my phone?”
“Yes. Why not borrow the DAC for now?” What a smile!

The parable of Darren and Ashley above suggests a number of things. Ashley was the music lover and immediately appreciated the listening of her favourite Motown music through the enhanced sound reproduction system provided by the external DAC-amplifier. The extra cost for such musical enjoyment was very affordable, and the extra DAC-amplifier slipped into her handbag.

In fact, Ashley had taken important steps on the journey to high-fidelity sound reproduction. Her laptop, which she already owned, was actually a pretty competent internet streaming device. The fifty-pound DAC, a digital-to-analogue converter, gave performance better than a ten-year-old hi-fi CD player costing £1,000. Her headphones, which she already owned, were good quality as headphones go. All in all, a very promising start to better fidelity sound reproduction. Even the hi-fi connoisseur is happy to use such a system from time to time. The system has all the advantages of convenience, portability, low cost and decent sound reproduction.

The key entry point to enhanced musical enjoyment described above is the internet streaming device: the source. Such internet streaming devices are everywhere in the typical home. They include a laptop, a smartphone, a television and a PlayStation. Any of these streaming devices can be hooked up to a DAC-amplifier and headphones or just to headphones, since most such streaming devices already contain a lower quality internal DAC. All is easy to do and at modest cost.

There is another thing that is easy to do and does not cost an arm and a leg. Let me introduce it by way of Ashley’s mother, who loves nothing better than to watch a good drama on television. Although the vision reproduction of the new flat screen television was wonderful, the sound was, it has to be said, a little feeble. These televisions tend to have extremely small loudspeakers, frankly, pointed in the wrong direction. The solution is quite simple. The television has Bluetooth and can connect to a pair of small, active loudspeakers wirelessly. Now you have, for a small fraction of the cost of that n