Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I needed to add the following to the thread title - "when assessing your music system".

[Toontrev]

Haven't they always been two different things. I dislike the phrase Hi Fi, I own a stereo system. Hi Fi is for knobs who never go to gigs and are never found in a record shop on a Saturday morning.

[Fretless]

I spend far more on CD's than I do on HiFi.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Its like talking to brick wall, is there anyone out there that understands what I am talking about. I AM MAKING A SPECIFIC POINT on how we choose / interpret what is good in a music system.

1/ is it chosen and talked about in hi-fi terms OR 2/ is it chosen and talked about in musical terms. And which creates what we are all looking for. Are they different or is it just semantics.

I say they are different, and the lost people fed on by the slurpers are those pursuing hi-fi.

I read other forums, I read magazines - I see hi-fi. Unless I am going bonkers from the reviews written here a lot of us see the difference, why are we the only ones who appreciate this, and from some of the above posts I am even beginning to doubt a lot of us. That makes this thread VERY important.

[savvypaul]

I would put people into these categories...

1. Those who judge by the music and talk about the music and the emotional connection.

2. Those who judge by the music but talk about the sound (because that is what they are used to reading).

3. Those who judge by the sound and talk about the sound.

4. Those who judge by the measurements and talk about the sound and the measurements.

5. Those who judge by the measurements and talk about the measurements.

In 3, 4 & 5...music and hifi are judged as different things.

In 2...it is semantics, they are the same thing but expressed differently. In the last few years I have migrated from 3 to 2 and then to 1...with occasional lapses back to 2.

It is easier to sell to 3, 4 & 5 people. Sound and measurements are more tangible in written format and many people seek a 'logic' that they can grasp, even when they know that the hobby can only be regarded as subjective.

On hifi forums, overall, my gut feeling is that the 'population' roughly breaks down as:

1 = 5% of people
2 = 20%
3 = 50%
4 = 20%
5 = 5%

Nothing scientific, just observation and argument!

Have sellers taken advantage of this or have these behaviours driven sellers? Both. There are some very good people who still feel that they need to 'play the game' to make a living. At the other extreme there are marketing departments selling 'specs' that have never listened to the product.

[Fretless]

I have separate mental modes for listening.

1) just enjoying the music
2) analysing the production/performance - what have the artist/producer done.
3) quality of recording/pressing/mastering - is this CD edition better than the last remaster? Etc.
4) listening to the 'hifi', seeing how components affect the sound, listening critically to what the equipment is doing.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

That seems daft to me Fretless, by doing # one the thoughts about the rest should emerge naturally with the right stimulation, not artificial programming the mind.

[Lurcher300b]

I have separate mental modes for listening.

Exactly, that’s why I posted the youtube link, to me music is about so much more than hifi and there are many ways I can listen to it and talk about it and make it, and none of those are useful to me as a way of categorising or communicating the performance of a hifi system.

I would put people into these categories

Yes, I would generally agree with that, but TBH I don't tend to talk to others about the performance of hifi as its very difficult without any fixed reference. Measurements are useful when it comes to discussing the performance of a part of a system and that is the only way I know of actually talking about it in a way where you have some confidence that the other person has the same understanding as you do. I do have certain recordings that I use to compare aspects of systems as I think they have characteristics that highlight certain areas of the system performance, but as they are only against my mental standards they are no use to communicate with others.

But when I see people using phases like "its much more musical" I honestly don’t know what that means. At least I know what "more musical" means to me, and I could say that a performance or recording is more musical to me than another performance or recording, but I don’t understand how listening to one of those recordings on two systems can make the recording more or less musical. I can see how it would let me see the inner structure of the music, or allow me to hear the interaction between the musicians, and possibly understand the emotion the composer was trying to replicate. But to me that’s just the system being more revealing, which I would think is one of those HiFi terms.

[Fretless]

That seems daft to me Fretless, by doing # one the thoughts about the rest should emerge naturally with the right stimulation, not artificial programming the mind.

#1 is for me just relaxing into the music and enjoying an emotional response.
The other modes are mentally active, analytical mindsets where my attention is directed to the different facets of the recording and reproduction process.

It's how my brain works.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

It is so simple, as a band are they together more, as a composition do you understand it more, are the musicians showing their skill as better or worse. I could go on and on and describe individual musicians their performance seen in comparison between systems or system item changes. You could write pages about every comparison with every piece of music, but MOSTLY it is those changes that hit you on the head that you shout about. There are many reviews in the NVA review section where you can see this in action.

The best equipment is the equipment that produces the best music not the best hi-fi. Listen to music and you will always be relatively happy listen to hi-fi and you will always be relatively unhappy or mind blocked.