Your chance to have your say!

[admin_exported]

Evening all

We're currently embroiled in the production stages for the 2009 issue of the Ultimate Guide to Hi-Fi (it's on sale February 5th), so here's your chance to get your opinions in print. Regular readers will know we run a feature in every issue where we give forum posters a chance to air their views on a range of subjects: as this particular issue is all about hi-fi, we want you to tell us (and everyone else) what you love about both your hi-fi system in particular, and about hi-fi in general. What inspired you to buy a hi-fi system in the first place? What impresses you about your system now? What do you say to friends and family who simply don't 'get' your hi-fi enthusiasm? Which pieces of music sound good through it? What would you like to buy next, credit crunch permitting?

Be as expansive as you like: as ever, the best-written contributions will appear in the magazine complete with a credit for your efforts, so get your thinking caps on and get posting!

Cheers

Andy

 

[JoelSim]

What I say to those who don;t understand is 'Listen'

They soon get it.ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

Fair point, and an argument I've used myself for, ooh, 25 years or so. As I think you mean, it's not hard convincing the average Joe of the merits of hi-fi. The only difficulty seems to be getting them to pay attention to it in the first place.

 

[JoelSim]

Yes most people are interested in music, rather than how good the music sounds as they don't know what they're missing. Same reason why most people shop at Tesco and eat tasteless, yet perfectly round tomatoes

ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

I think its a life style thing as well, to apreciate good systems you need time as well as money, is there a big enough gap between a £500 system and a £3000 , the answer is no, to the average man, women ,family.

 

[JoelSim]

There is if you have a £3,000 system and then listen to a £500 system.

ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

Music is made to be heard and played for many of decades. Music is at the heart of man, it comes from the soul. Music is unique. Music can be anything the listener wants it to be. You have to trust in the Music...and the Hi-Fi system that allows us to experience it.

The humble (or not so humble, depending on how much you spend on it

) Hi-Fi system allows us to experience the beauty of music in all it's glory. People who don't understand my Hi-Fi obsession obviously don't understand music: the richness and warmth it can be, the emotions it inspires, the crispness and transparency to the original recording. Hi-Fi is not about: "Oooh, look how cool my Hi-Fi looks, oooh look how much I spent on it!" It's about getting to the heart of music, the conveyer of emotions and experiences. To anyone who doesn't understand our obsession with Hi-Fi, first needs to understand our obession with music. To do that just listen, REALLY listen to some music on a good system. Close your eyes, feel the music, experience the music. Then you will understand what inspires us to buy our Hi-Fi systems and spend hours listening to them. It's what drives us to spend even when their is a Global Financial Crisis Hi-Fi is driven by the will to experience music to it's fullest!

 

[Charlie Jefferson]

One of my favourite songs is The Way That He SIngs by My Morning Jacket. It sounds great on a tinny transistor radio & mighty fine on my iPod, but when I let it loose through my hi-fi something transcendental occurs which was previously not apparent. An addictive symbiosis of listener and song. The valleys and peaks of the musical mountain range aren't merely glimpsed they feel fully explored.*

*Perhaps this unwieldy phrase explains why I was encouraged to give up creative writing circa "O" Levels!

Blah,blah,blah. . .

 

[chebby]

Hifi enthusiast. Hifi 'Buff'. Hifi hobbyist. 'Gearhead'.

We have all heard these expressions, read them and maybe even used them ourselves.

All carry some sort of negative connotation nowadays. The 'hobby' is no longer a respected means of passing spare time in this age of consumption. We tend to think of train-spotters and people building Cathedrals from used matchsticks! 'Sad' is usually the accompanying epithet.

It is true that someone so interested in hifi equipment that they lose sight of it's purpose could be accused of being a 'gearhead' (or worse) unless they are actually manufacturing it for a livelihood.

But hang on, Roy Gandy - the engineer and co-founder of Rega Research - started his hifi career modifying friend's and colleague's turntables & speakers and putting together systems for them as a spare time hobby. Many of our best British companies started out in a similar fashion where individuals, dissatisfied with available products, would set-to and modify or make their own in their bedrooms or garages or student digs. (Arcam and Pink Triangle another two examples.)

The 1950s and 60s were the heyday of DIY (or part DIY) home hifi and it was very common for people make their own turntable plinths, speaker enclosures and even to build their own amplifiers from designs publicised in music and electronics magazines.
E-bay still turns up a respectable number of Tannoy speakers from that era in home-made cabinets.

All these people shared a passion for music (Roy Gandy - a keen guitarist - still plays in a band) and a passion for perfecting the playback of music in as convincing and faithful a manner as they could achieve.

I read regularly - in the WHF forums - accounts of people having to plead a case for their hifi and hifi upgrades in their home. Partners are depicted as non-sympathetic to the equipment on aesthetic, monetary and other grounds. The same people get far less resistance to the purchase of vast plasma televisions or a house extension or the purchase of a holiday or any number of equally and more expensive items! So maybe it is not the equipment itself nor the music that causes so much domestic tension but that stigma of 'hobbyism' striking again.

Some 20 years ago my father (a classical music lover) was going to buy a new hifi and I suggested the local dealership that I used. I explained how friendly they were and how he could take his favourite discs and sit down and listen to different options whilst the staff did all the hard work and that they would even deliver and install.

He declined. He thought this type of hifi - despite sounding great - was 'too complicated' and instead he ended up buying a huge rack-system with about 100 various controls, dials, sliders, knobs and switches and a pair of speakers that even had knobs on them too! He never learnt the purpose of all these gizmos (many of them had no apparent purpose) and he never got the chance to hear it before purchase, no delivery, no install, no advice or 3 year warranty and very little resale value.

I asked him how his rack system was 'less complicated' than my gear? My amplifier only had a volume control, a source selector and a power on/off button. He could only answer that he just 'did not want to get into all that'.

I understand now that 'all that' means hobbyism. He did not want to go to a specialist dealer because somehow they represented 'all that'. The local electronics discount warehouse was free of 'all that'. Free of trained staff and demo rooms and free of being able to try-before-you-buy. But most importantly, free of the chance of infection. Free of that infectious 'hobbyism' and enthusiasm for music and hifi that sets a good system apart (from those bought in the same manner as refrigerators and washing machines) because they were designed by people with a passion.

 

[PJPro]

Blimey.

 

[professorhat]

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay....

 

[Anonymous]

How about......

Lose those veils! Feel the bass 'slam'! Argue over 'musicality'!

Oh yes, and so much more.

 

[Anonymous]

With the convenience, cost and sound quality of an iPod with a pair of £60 headphones, how are we going to convert the masses to the hifi world? If it couldn't be done before the iPod, it won't happen now. Good hifi costs a lot of money and equates to a lot of downloaded music.

...and iPods have kudos don't they...

 

[the record spot]

To be honest, hifi never really interested me much; it was always about the music, even from an early age.

As time has passed and my income has increased, my interest in hifi has grown, but only really to enhance my appreciation of the music I enjoy.

I don't buy hi-fi to add to the furniture collection; I buy it to perform a function and everything else regarding it is incidental.

 

[Anonymous]

To me hifii is an end to a means as well. It's not about the hifi, it's about the getting carried away.

The nicer my music sounds, the faster my evenings fly by. Working on an essay gets quite enjoyable if Porcupine Tree is playing live not 6 feet away from me.

My hifi gear makes it feel like they're playing in my room, my hifi gear makes me dream away into the world of fantasy while reading a book. It makes me Gordon Ramsey when cooking.

My hifi makes my music sound so good I can't help to get carried away. Whatever I'm doing. It makes life far more enjoyable.

 

[Anonymous]

As someone else mentioned, hi-fi can be viewed in a similiar way to train-spotting.

There's this attitude that's come along ; all time must be used productively (ie, ultimately to do with money and career). Hard working adults - anyone over 25 - should spend their spare time investing in property, renovating their houses etc. Beyond that, sanctioned 'fun' activities might involve watching rugby, fishing or driving your SUV (if you're a bloke). Music is not included, because it implies and emotional attachment to something that has no practical purpose. It's immature. Snore.

That said, I would find it hard to justify spending a large amount of money on it, and the prices of 'entry level' components from a couple of the 'serious' brands seem to be getting a bit too high.

 

[crusaderlord]

Simply put, good quality hi-fi will add life and vibrancy to your music making it a more engaging and enjoyable experience. Try it and be converted.

 

[Andrew Everard]

It's all about the point when you stop hearing the system.

When we moved into our new place a few years back the system was the first thing to be set up - naturally - and it being May we had the windows open into the garden.

When the neighbours came round to say hello, they looked round our main room very confused, and asked my wife 'Where's the piano?'

 

[the record spot]

Just out of interest Andrew, what system do you run again (I will probably regret asking this...!)?

 

[Andrew Everard]

It's all here.

 

[the record spot]

Yes, suitably envious of the hi-fi kit....!

 

[Anonymous]

Hi-Fi is about being the director of your music, taking control of the notes and making them sound exactly how you want. But there is also an explorative factor, digging up the detail in tracks and hearing things you believe you are the first to hear, that faint echo in the studio or backing vocal you missed. Music is malleable and Hi-Fi is your tool.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Brisk:Music is malleable and Hi-Fi is your tool.

I'm liking that - reads like a movie tagline

 

[Anonymous]

To quote Tony Blair's famous speech, "I'm not one for clich‚s"; Yet the one piece of advice I give to every music lover I have ever met is not to "search for the holy grail", but to buy something realistic and enjoy your music, because let's be honest, that's what really matters.

 

[the record spot]

Erm, so says the poster who's been searching for the holy grail since this site was set up!