What is Hifi
Some History…
What is Hifi? Originally it was about recreating great-sounding music. Over the years, around the mid 80’s it evolved into something much more, much bigger, almost unbelievable. Until someone actually hears the state of the art in HiFi, it’s pretty hard to talk to them about it. HiFi today is not about hearing quality music, high DSP music on earbuds… it is much more. In addition to the replication of music, today’s systems delivers a sonic Sound Stage.
And just like a visual stage, there is a sound stage, we hear it but at the same time we actually see it. This idea of sonic vision comes from the leakage between our seeing nervous system and our hearing nervous system. Some people have more sonic vision, leakage, than others. It’s called Synethesia and it has been around forever. It actually includes the leakage of stimulus between all of the senses.
Some modern hi-fi equipment can be digitally connected using fibre optic TOSLINK cables, USB ports (including one to play digital audio files), or Wi-Fi support.
Another modern component is the music server consisting of one or more computer hard drives that hold music in the form of computer files. When the music is stored in an audio file format that is lossless such as FLAC, Monkey’s Audio or WMA Lossless, the computer playback of recorded audio can serve as an audiophile-quality source for a hi-fi system. There is now a push from certain streaming services to offer hi-fi services.
Streaming services typically have a modified dynamic range and possibly bit rates lower than audiophiles would be happy with. Tidal has launched a hi-fi tier that includes access to FLAC and Master Quality Authenticated studio masters for many tracks through the desktop version of the player. This integration is also available for high-end audio systems.
