How to Judge a Hi-Fi System
Choosing a hi-fi system or upgrading your existing home audio gear should increase the musical enjoyment it brings into your home. However, deciding the best option can be a daunting task. There’s a wide range of brands and different products. What should you be looking for in a hi-fi system or component?
Different listeners can have different preferences influencing how they evaluate a hi-fi system’s sound. Each brand’s products can enhance certain aspects of music, so instead of giving our (biased) thoughts on them, we will focus on four universal ideas you can consider when assessing any hi-fi system or component.
This blog post was adapted from a document in our filing cabinets predating our opening in 1985.
Can you sing along with the system?
This isn’t suggesting that you bring out a microphone and start singing aloud. Instead, following and trying to reproduce the pitch of the sounds coming from the hi-fi system.
We describe this as ‘foot-tapping’; how easy it is for you to tap along with the music and respond to it. Your hi-fi system needs to enable you to sing along, respond to the music, evaluate the performance, and perceive the composer’s message.
Find a hi-fi system that brings you hours of enjoyment and musical pleasure. If the hi-fi system does not fulfil this, it will never be fully utilised regardless of how high-end it is.
A system that you can sing along to is key to selecting the right one for you.
Technical specifications are not useful
“No human being on the planet can look at the technical specifications of a piece of audio equipment and even remotely guess at how the equipment will sound in use.”
A bold statement if in today’s age, with many home audio buyers disregarding certain products based on the specifications alone. What is the frequency range, how many watts does this amp output?
Product specifications are more accessible than ever through the Internet. It is very easy to fall into the trap of comparing hi-fi gear through their specifications. They can be useful, but it is difficult, near impossible to determine what the hi-fi component sounds based on the specs alone.
Listening for yourself is the best way to assess a piece of hi-fi equipment. Does it enable you to sing along, respond to it, and bring the ‘foot-tapping’ reaction? Last of all, comparing it to your level of musical expectations and whether it will give you musical pleasure if you take it home.
Comparing to your internal reference
Instead of using quantitative, technical criteria for judging hi-fi systems, make an accurate assessment using your own ‘internal reference system’. In other words, your ears and your brain.
The only way to assess anything is by comparing it against a reference. Our internal reference system is what we use to assess colour. ‘The sky is blue’ and ‘grass is green’, comparing colours to our internal collection of colour references. Similarly, when we tune a guitar, we do not directly compare the pitch of two strings. We reproduce in our minds the pitch of one string and compare the pitch of the next string with our internal reference system.
Using our internal reference system to assess hi-fi systems will inform us if the relative pitches are harmonious and moving in predictable, coherent steps. Making it sound like music, or whether is it just noise.
Combining this musical method with singing along with a hi-fi system, you can better judge the equipment and if it will bring musical pleasure into your home.
Your hi-fi retailer
Assessing hi-fi equipment relies on your chosen hi-fi retailer and their demonstration abilities and facilities. Do they create a good environment allowing you to listen to your music and the hi-fi gear?
Your hi-fi retailer should have an adept understanding of the parameters crucial to optimising a hi-fi system’s performance. This includes the impact of a wall of loudspeakers, wobbly stands, placement of hi-fi components and loudspeakers.
If your hi-fi retailer has attention to detail in their demonstration rooms, they can produce good results consistently. Creating a place for you to assess a hi-fi component to what it should sound like and reproduce similar or better results when they set it up in your home.
Conclusion:
When selecting a hi-fi system, it is important to use qualitative, musical criteria rather than a quantitative one. You cannot secure musical pleasure from a hi-fi system that is not the right match for you by doubling numbers on the technical specifications.
You can ask yourself questions of a musical nature, such as:
Do all the musicians seem to be playing together?'
Can you hear all the instruments all the time?
Can you pick out the bassline or any other musical part and follow it without difficulty?
Can you ‘sing’ along to the melody?
Are you responding to the music - for example, tapping in time?
“If a system can reproduce the tune, then it will do everything else well as a matter of course. It will sound fast when the music is meant to be fast and relaxing when the music is intended to relax.”
We proposed the simplest and most effective way to evaluate any hi-fi component. Are you able to sing along to it? And will it bring musical pleasure into your home? If the answers are yes, this will secure you with hours and hours of enjoyment.
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Thumbnail Photo by Gabriel Varaljay on Unsplash