So just what is Hi-Fi or in its full form High Fidelity?

[Barry]

Is looking through a magnifying glass unrealistic?

Or does it just tell you more about reality?

Yes - everything is larger than in reality.

Does it just tell you more about reality? No - it tells you more about a certain, but limited, aspect of reality.

[User211]

Yes - everything is larger than in reality.

Does it just tell you more about reality? No - it tells you more about a certain, but limited, aspect of reality.

But is it larger than in reality?

It's only your perception of size that tells you that.

What you see through the glass is real.

Suggest we try another line or we'll end up in deep discussions about the nature of reality.

Or is that really what this thread is about?

[walpurgis]

A live performance is the Highest Fi. Everything else is just a variably successful attempt to mimic this.

[AJSki2fly]

Hi-Fi surely is in the ear of the beholder😉, so what is used to reproduce music and in what format is dependent on the perception of the individual listening, is it not about the experience and not what reproduces the music? 😘

[Redox]

I thought post war musical consumption was based around AM radio and 78 RPM discs. With the advent of the Long Player the term High Fidelity was used to differentiate with modern pickups and the like. Really just a marketing term to sell to more consumer electronics.

[walpurgis]

No. Hi-Fi may have been very much a minority speciality pre-WW2, but it certainly existed.

[Light Dependant Resistor]

No. Hi-Fi may have been very much a minority speciality pre-WW2, but it certainly existed.

It was demonstrated in the form of FM radio , which can be read in the aptly named book Man of High Fidelity

http://www.njarc.org/books/man-of-high-fidelity.pdf

' Suddenly out of the silence came Runyon's supernaturally clear voice:
"This is amateur station W2AG at Yonkers, New York, operating on frequency
modulation at two and a half meters."

A hush fell over the large audience. Waves of two and a half meters (110 megacycles)
were waves so short that up until then they had been regarded as too weak to carry a message
across a street. Moreover, W2AG's announced transmitter power was barely enough to light one
good-sized electric bulb. Yet these shortwaves and weak power were not only carrying a
message over the seventeen miles from Yonkers, but carrying it by a method of modulation
which the textbooks still held to be of no value. And doing it with a life-like clarity never heard
on even the best clear-channel stations in the regular broadcasting band.

The demonstration that ensued became a part of the Major's standard repertoire in
showing off the remarkable properties of his new broadcasting system. A glass of water was
poured before the microphone in Yonkers; it sounded like a glass of water being poured and not,
as in the "sound effects" on ordinary radio, like a waterfall. A paper was crumpled and torn; it
sounded like paper and not like a crackling forest fire. An oriental gong was softly struck and its
overtones hung shimmering in the meeting hall's arrested air. Sousa marches were played from
records and a piano solo and guitar number were performed by local talent in the Runyon livingroom.

The music was projected with a "liveness" rarely if ever heard before from a radio "music
box." The absence of background noise and the lack of distortion in FM circuits made music
stand out against the velvety silence with a presence that was something new in auditory
experiences. The secret lay in the achievement of a signal-to-noise ratio of 100-to-l or better, as
against 30-to-l on the best AM stations.

[bob4333]

One thing's for certain- the Hi-Fi you think you hear now is inevitably different to the Hi-Fi you heard in your 20's. And it's got nothing to do with the plugged in hardware.

[AJSki2fly]

I thought post war musical consumption was based around AM radio and 78 RPM discs. With the advent of the Long Player the term High Fidelity was used to differentiate with modern pickups and the like. Really just a marketing term to sell to more consumer electronics.

Here is the Wikipedia definition for what its worth, but it shows a view the there was poorer SQ until the late 40's.

High fidelity (often shortened to hi-fi or hifi) is a term used by listeners, audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound. This is in contrast to the lower quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment, AM radio, or the inferior quality of sound reproduction that can be heard in recordings made until the late 1940s.

Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) frequency response within the human hearing range.

it goes on to site these:-

Beginning in 1948, several innovations created the conditions that made major improvements of home-audio quality possible:

• Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, based on technology taken from Germany after WWII, helped musical artists such as Bing Crosby make and distribute recordings with better fidelity.
• The advent of the 33⅓ rpm Long Play (LP) microgroove vinyl record, with lower surface noise and quantitatively specified equalization curves as well as noise-reduction and dynamic range systems. Classical music fans, who were opinion leaders in the audio market, quickly adopted LPs because, unlike with older records, most classical works would fit on a single LP.
• FM radio, with wider audio bandwidth and less susceptibility to signal interference and fading than AM radio.
• Better amplifier designs, with more attention to frequency response and much higher power output capability, reproducing audio without perceptible distortion.
• New loudspeaker designs, including acoustic suspension, developed by Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss with improved bass frequency response.

It goes on to say:-

Listening tests
Listening tests are used by hi-fi manufacturers, audiophile magazines and audio engineering researchers and scientists. If a listening test is done in such a way that the listener who is assessing the sound quality of a component or recording can see the components that are being used for the test (e.g., the same musical piece listened to through a tube power amplifier and a solid state amplifier), then it is possible that the listener's pre-existing biases towards or against certain components or brands could affect their judgment. To respond to this issue, researchers began to use blind tests, in which the researchers can see the components being tested, but the listeners undergoing the experiments can't. In a double-blind experiment, neither the listeners nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the experimental group, or which type of audio component is being used for which listening sample.

I think the above is probably a reasonably text book type of definition and how SQ of Hi-Fi is or can be evaluated but what is interesting is what you think is Hi-Fi and what is not.

So for example you might consider that an old Pye 35 valve radio is not Hi-Fi at all but that a modern single box DAB radio or Streaming Speaker is. I am not actually saying this is my view it is just a possible example.

Over to you......

[walpurgis]

There is no threshold that was crossed and we suddenly found ourselves in the age of HiFi. Even a good big acoustic gramophone can turn in a startlingly good sound.