Perhaps we should stick with midfi...


I just bought a $60,000 system with big names like krell, Audio Research, Mcintosh, B&W 802 D speakers, Sony SACD, Transparent wires, etc, and I get more enjoyment from my sub $1000 I put together used with ADS speaker, NAD monitor pre amp, Onkyo Integra M-504 power amp, Toshiba SD-9200 DVD player (as CD and DVD).

I am thinking I should have stopped with my midfi system now...

Anyone else have similar sentiments, or is my ear not golden enough to hear the difference yet?
gonglee3
Douglas Schroeder,

My reasoning was that the overwhelming majority of homes use the same baseboards throughout. When doing renovations/additions, people take great pains to match baseboards, trim, etc. That being said, some people do just go over to Home Depot and buy what's available/cheapest. I made an observation. If I was wrong, I'll be the first to admit it.
Nothing wrong with sticking to “mid-fi.”

I’ve been in the wine biz for 35 years now. Sometimes the best glass of wine is just a glass of wine - and ought to be. I taste/sample thousands of wines in any given year so I have a reference point for what I’ll deem personally acceptable at any price. 

I don’t have a $60k stereo system, but it’s better than what my girlfriend has. I wouldn’t hesitate spending that or more if I could, though.

I gave her two stereos, both vintage receivers. A Pioneer SX1050 & Meadowlark Kestrels for her living room, Marantz 2250b & small Ushers for the bedroom.  The Meadowlarks are truly excellent speakers, $400 used from a fellow member. 

They both sound fine.  We have yet to NOT enjoy listening to music at her house. My home stereo is a Modwright integrated paired to a pair of Vandy 3A Signature speakers - not too shabby. 

I could easily swap the reviews of sound equipment here with wine reviews.  Much of the language used to convey the impressions is interchangeable.  That’s the fun of it.  But I think we all come to a point where we find ourselves questioning the validity of what may please us and what we may spend to get it.  Since joining this site about 5 years ago I’ve had more gear than I owned in the previous 40 years combined!

Has it been fun?  Hell, yes!  Has it been worth it?  Hell, yes!  I got into it because there was that ONE time when I discovered something that I never knew was there before - something within a very familiar tune that better equipment revealed. Voila!  Hooked!

Back in the 80’s I began collecting wine. Within a few years I had a modest assemblage of Bordeaux and Burgundy, perhaps 25 cases or so, with some California as well. When I had the disposable income I bought, when I didn’t, well, I consumed. 7Couldn’t help it. Then a nor’easter wreaked havoc in my house and what remained of my collection was rendered undrinkable.  Poof. Back to the drawing board. 

Just last week I was hanging support rods for sun shade curtains around my girlfriend’s patio when, on her cheap, yellowed,  white plastic am/fm cassette portable “Life Is A Carnival” started playing. Now that’s one busy little mother of a tune that I often find myself repeating ad infinitum on my home stereo, but there in her backyard through that ridiculously cheap, low-fi, weather-beaten p.o.s. it sounded GREAT.  It would sound great through two cans connected by a piece of string. 

It’s the music, not the gear. 

There’s hi-fi, mid-fi, low-fi, and now wifi. 

New one:  “My-fi.”




I wonder how many people who have read this 9 year old thread still do not have a "Tunable System"? I wonder how many who have posted and read 20 or more years ago still don't have a "Tunable System"?Thousands of threads posted and the same people asking how to get something they don't have.

Buy a line conditioner, get this or that speaker, amp, DAC, wire, table....and still not understanding that this media is variable. Millions upon millions of $$$$$ spent on something that doesn't even exist. HEA is a price tag and nothing else. And the blame game :). Let's blame recordings, engineers and low budgets for bad sound. The blind in this hobby will do anything not to see. Desperate to justify their spending. Folks so desperate that they are spending even more money to try to justify their spending. And, every audiophile out there knows that there will come a day that you will put on a great recording and it will sound terrible on your over built over priced system. There's absolutely no way around it, you are going to play a great recording and it is going to sound terrible. And, even though the cause is staring you right in the ears you go on saying a system that only knows how to play one sound can't be at fault.

You my friends are no longer a part of the audiophile majority, but instead the ever shrinking crowd that is paddling your way into obscurity. The rest of us who tune, either through DSP, Equalization or Physically or all of the above, hear a recording that sounds off and we correct it. We have the ability to make the necessary adjustments to our liking while you keep messing with an idea that never worked and never will. The idea that all recordings sound the same and or have the same values never ever existed. It was just a group of reviewers piping a dream of "wouldn't it be nice" and some how the audio designers lost their minds and delivered a false premise. They delivered products that were incomplete by design when plugged together. They never stopped to ask "how do I play a variable medium through a discrete system". Instead this hobby settled for only being able to play a few recordings very well, some ok, and even more horribly out of tune.

Listing how much you have spent on a component or the brand means absolutely Zip in a hobby that requires Acoustical, Mechanical and Electrical variability to play back recordings. Oh but keep playing and we will see you in another 9 years asking the same questions and giving the same advice, with probably only one change. Half of this generation will be dead and gone and most of the other half will have discovered how the hobby of playback really works.

Michael Green

+1 on Myfi, which I was (honestly) about to propose. My reasoning being that any music played from a system that makes me happier than before I started listening, no matter the componentry, is "Myfi."

oblgny: you beat me to it!