GETTING STARTED IN HI-FI

Rumbustious contributor-at-large Sy Croydon offers ‘boring old fart’ advice to young persons interesting in improving the sound of their favourite artists without all the tech-speak that’s usually found in such articles.

So, you’re a young person who’s heard your dad talk about the golden days of hi-fi and you’re interested. The idea of hearing your music as clearly and enjoyably as possible seems to have a certain merit, and the concept of having a tune send shivers up your spine instead of just being a vague noise playing in the background carries a certain appeal. And you can’t think of any negatives to hearing the soundtrack of a movie being crystalclear either.

But then the boring old fart (known henceforth as BOFs) starts talking about Class-A amplifiers, thermionic valves, how MP3s are a tool of Satan, ‘front end first’ and separate power supplies for every component, and the good old days of sacrificing virgins as part of the process of setting up their cartridge… and how real men think tone controls are for wimps.

Sure, at the high end some of these ideas have merit, but it needn’t be like that. You might have heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns? In the field of music reproduction, like anything else, the higher up the chain you go, the less return you get for your extra outlay. Going from a $50,000 set-up to a $200,000 one will give you only the slightest of perceptible improvements. But go from playing compressed MP3s through a set of cheap earbuds to playing high-quality files through a decent system and the difference will pick your psyche up and body-slam it. In the nicest possible way!

The aim of this article is to dispel some of the more heinous myths about good sound, and give you some ideas that you might consider in your quest for enjoying your music more.

When hi-fi BOFs get together, you’ll hear them talk about all kinds of quasi-philosophical ways of evaluating sound quality. You’ll hear words such as ‘musicality’, ‘integrated bass’, ‘slow (or fast) bass’ or ‘tightness.’ They’ll describe the sound produced by a particular component as being ‘dark’, ‘mellow’, ‘forward’ or ‘bright.’ All these terms can be useful enough, but frankly, there’s only one criterion you need to decide how good the sound of a system is. The more you enjoy music through it, the better it is.

You probably know that the range of sounds the human ear can discern is essentially divided into three ranges. Bass (deep, low notes, such as are produced by a drum, bass guitar or church organ) midrange (the human voice being the best example) or treble (high notes, with too many examples to list.) Generally speaking, you want the bass to be as deep as possible, but it’s not as simple as that. Bass can go deep but still be bad: such as if it goes ‘doof doof’ and drowns out the rest of the music. Treble can go so high that it’s a few hertz short of only dogs being able to hear it, but if it makes your ears ring uncomfortably, it’s still crap. Your aim is to have a sound where all of the streams of a given song work well together.

Things to listen for? All of the instruments being discernible, so that if you shut your eyes you can ‘see’ them all in different parts of an imaginary stage is a good start. Bass that gets your pulse racing, a human voice that caresses your mind, treble that... hey, I think you get the idea.

So, how to get it? I’m going to start with the cheapest, simplest way and work upwards to... err, um… still relatively cheap and simple. Of course, if you want to keep going after that, and end up with a system with fifty sources and twenty power amps, the best of luck to you. I’m also going to make the assumption that you’re starting with what’s a fairly common way to listen to music these days—a mobile phone or tablet, with a pair of earbuds, playing MP3 files (or the Apple equivalent) or maybe a computer with the speakers that came as part of the package. Note: I am in no way saying this is a bad thing. The best upgrade is from no music to music, and I for one have had some enjoyable bus commutes with my phone along for the ride. But if you crave something better...

Upgrade 1: Headphones

Reproducing sound is basically a matter of physics. If you look at the cones of a set of speakers you will see them actually flexing. What they are doing is pushing air, and it’s this moving air that enables you to hear the sound. To reproduce treble, the speaker cone needs to vibrate at a frantic rate, and obviously small ones can do this better than big ones. This is why a speaker normally has a large cone (a ‘woofer’) for the bass, and a tiny one (‘a tweeter’) for the treble. To be able to drive these cones, the more power the amplifier has, the better (actually it’s not quite as simple as that, but it’s a good general rule.)

So, if you want a better sound, the obvious way would be to get a more powerful amplifier? Well, sure, that’s one way, but not the only way. Fixing it so the amplifier has to do less work to get the same result makes just as much sense. If you want to make a car go faster, you can either fit a more powerful engine, or make the body lighter, and this first suggested upgrade uses the second plan. To give good bass and treble through headphones is always easier than through speakers, because it only has to ‘push’ a tiny little cone instead of a much bigger one. So get hold of the best set of headphones you can, plug them into the appropriate jack on the computer and you’ll notice the difference straight away.

‘Hang on’ you say, ‘I’m already listening on earbuds. Surely they’re just as easy to drive as headphones.’ Well, sure, good earbuds are fine, but since they don’t form a perfect seal with your ear, much of the sound quality—I’m using the best metaphor I can here—kind of leaks out. Mostly in the bass area. That’s why when you sit next to a person using earbuds on the train you can hear a kind of ‘thump thump’ that drives you mad. Proper headphones form a seal around the ear, making the transmission of sound much more efficient. It’s like the difference between watering the yard with a hose that leaks and watering it with one that doesn’t.

The other joy of headphones is that they are totally portable, and switchable between devices. Listen to your phone or music device on the bus, and then plug them into your computer when you get home. Some Blu-ray players and TVs have headphone outlets and will sound ‘way better through ‘phones than from the tiny little speakers built into TV monitors. Buying a good set of phones instantly upgrades every device you own.

Upgrade 2: The Software

Back in the old days, you could buy all kinds of record-cleaning devices, usually brushes, alcohol-based liquids or even expensive machines that plugged into the mains and vacuumed the grit out of the groove of the record. And all selfrespecting BOFs made sure to buy ‘audiophile quality’ LPs or CDs. Fair enough, you might think this a bit over the top, but it did recognise an important fact—when you lose quality at an early point in the chain, you can never get it back.