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(translated
from HiFi Maailma - September 2007)
(Finnish
- Suomi)
What Is High Fidelity? /
Robert F. Woods
Ask someone familiar with Helsinki
where you can find a red hill in the city and you will
almost surely get a blank stare. Then ask them where Redhill
Street is and you will probably get a reasonable answer -
and even directions.
Similarly, ask a native English
speaking person what 'High Fidelity' is and while you won't
probably get a blank stare, you will get a range of answers
that will also not pertain to the word fidelity being a
linguistic relative of the word faithfulness - and that high
faithfulness means, in this context, being 'close to the
original.'
This all comes from the term High
Fidelity having become useless in describing what people are
buying when they purchase sound reproduction equipment.
This has not always been the case -
broad marketing of sound equipment already used live vs.
recorded performances in the early 60's - e.g. Acoustic
Research used the famous Fine Arts Quartet to try to show
their speakers produced the original sound. Wharfedale and
Dynaco also used the same technique.
But somehow the concept got lost
very quickly - G.A. Briggs - one of the key people of the
industry in the early days wrote already in 1960 - almost
FIFTY years ago: " hi-fi is a term which has today lost any
real significance as a result of misuse first on equipment
with exaggerated 'top' and bass, and later to describe
cheap, mass-produced outfits with 'mellow top' and no real
bass at all."
Because very few really seem to be
concerned with what the industry is really producing or why
- the buying public enters the market with no real reference
points as to what represents quality. Standards have been
tried - DIN 45500, Julian Hirsch's attempts to get the
Institute of High Fidelity to have standards widely used -
but these days almost anything goes unless magazines
themselves do independent testing.
A professional musician friend told
me that he has instructed studios making recordings of his
performances to deliberately use less-than-excellent
speakers as monitors - in this way people with very poor
equipment will be assured of getting decent
results.
One should not judge this chap on
this thinking as it really is a result of there having been
very poor product education in the field - and musicians
having very naturally a lot of subjective feelings of
recording procedures as they are artists - not
technicians.
It was later possible to get this
musician to understand how things should be when an analogy
was made with the visual world. The goal was set out of
transmitting a picture of, say, Mount Denali in Alaska to
someone in London via a paper photo. When the chain of
reproduction was described - the quality of lens and shutter
mechanism, exposure time, lighting, camera angle, choice of
film, developing method and time, photo paper, etc, - it
quickly became understood that if the goal was to see the
same Mount Denali in London via the photo - as the Mount
Denali seen by the viewer in Alaska - there was NO place for
subjectivity in the reproduction process. Needless to say -
with this analogy - he realized the best monitors should be
used in the recording process. And that also - any speaker
used in a home environment SHOULD be a monitor (read:
accurate) type of speaker.
And this indeed is what High
Fidelity is supposed to be involved with - transmitting the
exact same sound as the original sound. All subjectivity and
artistic creativeness is to be with the performance - and if
so desired, with the recording process (e.g. mixing of pop
tracks).
One can understand this if the
situation is turned on its head - imagine that an engineer
is making a recording of, say, a jazz ensemble and uses all
his education and experience to collect the proper
microphones with all the associated variables, position them
properly, use an 'excellent' recorder, have a proper
acoustic environment, etc. How is that 'perfect' recording
to reach the ear of a listener in his home if the listener's
equipment consists of an amplifier with a 'warm' sound -
speakers that are 'punchy' or 'smooth' - etc.? A
manufacturer has NO place to create equipment as if they
were instruments!
All this has also created great
confusion with what is now the 'Home Theater' industry.
There is an idea on the market - quite predominantly - that
one should distinguish between Music Equipment and Film
Equipment. This has to be total nonsense because the goal of
Home Theater (which can be just as easily Stereo as
Five-Channeled!) is to try to create a feeling of reality of
the original scene in the home. Since the sound part of the
film has the best possibility of aiding the feeling of
reality - it is obligatory that the sound reproduction is
accurate (dialogue must be as natural as possible) - which
means High Fidelity! Indeed it is more important for films
than pop music because one never knows what kind of mixing
of pop tracks has changed the original performance. And then
too - a great portion of the film sound track is anyhow
music!
So in sum - one should demand as
much accuracy from any equipment used for films as for
music! This concept also flows over to the idea that there
are speakers that are best for jazz - those best for pop -
those for classical, etc. If the idea of High Fidelity is
maintained - and speakers really are 'flat' as one would
think they should be - then all music, train whistles and
dog barks should be equally relayed accurately - and so
having different speakers for different 'types' of sounds or
music is nonsense..
With High Fidelity having become a
rather empty term for most of the public - there has been an
attempt to create a new genre - High-End. In a recent book
"The Complete Guide to High-End Audio," Robert Harley spends
the first chapter defining High-End and only refers to hi-fi
or high fidelity once in not even a meaningful way (to be
quoted below). Instead of trying to correct and/or deepen
the meaning of High Fidelity (a term which actually has
intrinsic meaning) - equipment marketing people are trying
to turn their back on it and just invent something
new.
Harley - when he uses the term
hi-fi says: "A common misperception among the hi-fi
consuming public is that high-end audio means high-priced
audio." He doesn't leave much to imagine why they think so
because in the 2nd chapter he says that a recent survey
found that the median price of high-end audio was $18,000!
He also says that when budgeting for high-end one should
think about 15% of their annual income!
The result of all this is that
equipment manufacturers have - for the most part - ignored
paying attention to actual sound quality for equipment with
average incomes. The contradiction inherent in this
situation is that sound quality itself is not very dependent
on price - at least not to the degree indicated by the price
levels discussed by Harley.
There is a rather critical aspect
to this high-price - high-end phenomenon - at least from a
normative sociological viewpoint: much of the pricing may be
related to the story floating around Helsinki of the 2
Russians on Helsinki's Esplanade: one has just purchased a
tie and his friend sees it and asks where he bought it and
what did he pay - he says 'over there' for 100€ - his friend
says - "Idiot! - I got the same tie 'over here' for 200€."
High pricing is often used as a deliberate tactic to create
enviable exclusivity - a technique often used with fashion,
restaurants and hotels.
The photo here is of a prototype
amplifier designed by Erik Edvardsen - one of the prominent
designers of the last 25 years. In a personal comment to the
writer he said that it was one of the best sounding amps
that he has designed or heard (some 200 watts or more of
real power). All can note the 'exotic' ash tray and pot
cover - he said one can color-co-ordinate the leads with
color spray cans of choice. The total cost of components in
the picture was about 40£ - much of it for the
transformer.
Those familiar with manufacturing
processes know that it is not cheap to arrange tooling for
front panels, chassis, meeting safety regulations etc. - but
it is important to note that the actual components for
producing excellent sound is not that which would make
anything very expensive. The same is true for speakers - a
decent amount must be spent on quality drivers - to assure
consistency and reliability - but again there is nothing to
prevent pricing for people of rather average income.
The choice to create front panels
with 3 cm. brushed aluminum - and piano-gloss veneers - is a
purely cosmetic aspect - and if one chooses to use their
personal resources there, it surely is fine - but this
aspect should never be confused with any necessities to use
financial muscle to create true High Fidelity. It would be
advantageous to everyone if there was good sounding
equipment at all reasonable levels of pricing. Maybe then
the general public would have higher requirements for ALL
the sound we meet. We would be instantly complaining when we
sat on a €65 million Airbus and still haven't the foggiest
idea of what the captain is telling us on the intercom. The
writer recently tried to listen to a grand performance of
Beethoven's Ninth in the open market square in Ljubljana -
chorus and musicians from all over the globe - and had to
leave after some minutes because the usual PA reinforced
sound was absolutely vile.
It should not be ignored that good
sound can be enjoyed by basically everyone - Golden Ears are
not necessary. The writer has always found that anyone
interested in investing even just half an hour of hearing
quality sound will be impressed by it - and wish to be able
to hear more. That only very expensive equipment - mostly
resulting from exotic cosmetic characteristics or artificial
pricing - forces these people off the market and away from a
new interest is somewhat of a pity.
In sum - open discussion and more
education as to what constitutes good sound reproduction
with a wider audience can only be a good thing as it would
expand quality choices for everyone - nothing is really
gained by creating a market exclusively for a supposed
elite.
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