- Joined
- Aug 14, 2018
- Messages
- 2,816
- Likes
- 8,282
It seems like you make some artificial distinction between the terms 'hifi' and 'audiophile'. Like one is 'good' and the other is 'bad'.
'High Fidelity' translates to 'highly true to the original'. And not to the best possible reproduction, otherwise people would have called it 'Best-fi' or 'Ulti-fi' or something like that. Hi-fi is an old term and refers historically to the DIN 45500 norm (DIN = Deutsche Industrie Norm). This DIN Norm consisted of certain minimum norms (frequency responce, SNR etc.) before you could call sound equipment 'hi-fi'. These DIN Norms are already very old and even lots of cheap modern appliances can easily cope with these DIN norms.
As said Hi-fi is an old term which originated around 1931: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity#DIN_45500.
Compared to current standards the Hi-Fi norm is more or less meaningless and outdated and certainly not as strict as you seem to define it.
According to Wiki an "audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction.[1] An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a live musical performance, typically in a room with good acoustics. It is widely agreed that reaching this goal is very difficult and that even the best-regarded recording and playback systems rarely, if ever, achieve it.[2][3]".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophile
Do you see a distinction between the two terms above? I do not. And why do you think audiophile means 'a coloured sound'? It simply means 'being enthusiastic about hifi'.
In short: The distinction you make between the two is non existent. It is of course possible that some audiophiles go too far in there hobby (as people can do in any hobby), but in the end it is both about hi-fi (or reaching for the best possible sound).
Conclusion: I don't get your point.
I think this comment (which I know is from some time ago) captures the issue nicely, in two specific statements.
One is the Wikipedia definition of "audiophile." To me the first sentence is uncontroversial and I would guess that we would all agree that it describes what an audiophile is, or at least should be: someone enthusiastic ("-phile") about sound ("audio"). But the second sentence is where the door cracks open to allow in the whole culture of audiophilia, which goes beyond the first sentence and in some important ways often ends up contradicting the first sentence. Given the proportion of commercially available music that is not actually a recording of a live performance - along with the fact that a majority of listeners do not necessarily have a live reference for what a particular voice, instrumental performance, or piece of music actually would sound like live - "live music" becomes a kind of euphonic fetish: a lot of people end up chasing a perceptual experience that they believe or fantasize sounds or feels like a live recording. So deep bass "oomph" can feel live precisely because you can feel it. Mid-bass warmth can sound live because it can produce resonances that lead to a perception of a more 3D soundstage. Second-order harmonic distortion in the upper-mids, by creating new musical-sounding harmonics, can lend a feeling of "sweetness" or a tiny bit of extra perceived ambience, which sound and feel "real". And lower to mid-treble elevation can, if it doesn't sound harsh, produce a perception of "air" and "detail" than can make one feel like the music is sort of leaping into the room. So much of audiophile culture is about manufacturers voicing their products to produce one or more of these effects, and audiophiles chasing various forms or combinations of these effects through means that we are all familiar with.
So even though it seems reasonable and logical, I would suggest that "live performance" reproduction has become an audiophile fetish that gets applied across the board to all recordings, even though most can't be reproduced that way in the average listener's home (or anywhere, in the case of most modern studio productions).
The second statement I find interesting is the notion that "high fidelity" is a basic minimum that's lower than - and separate from - "best fidelity" and that "audiophile" refers to the latter and not the former. That point about the DIN-45500 standard is interesting, but I would say as a matter of common sense that the term "high fidelity" long ago stopped being limited to what was possible on common equipment in 1931. There is no "extra fidelity" beyond high fidelity - it's not like pros and engineers in the audio field are saying, "okay, what came out of the mixing desk isn't the same as what went in, but it's close enough because we're only concerned with high fidelity but not total fidelity." So again, I think this is an example of how audiophile culture posits a level of sonic reproduction that is "higher than hi-fi." And I would argue that that "higher than hi-fi" sound is actually less faithful to the source than hi-fi, as it's about the euphonics noted above.
Last edited: