Is hi-fi getting better? The What Hi-Fi? team wants to know your thoughts!

It’s got to do by replacing current analogue-digital combi Studio Mixing consoles with all digital ones in the control room in modern Recording Studios worldwide.

I think hifi equipment is getting better, but the broader picture is mixed.

For me, I love a neutral sound - where everything is audible in balance and timbre is true to real life. Manufacturers who tailor to that have become better and better at delivering this, at lower and lower prices. My marvellous Chord Mojo sits in a drawer, rendered obsolete by a tiny £40 dongle containing a top notch DAC and headphone amp. My main speakers now sound even better than my excellent 2013 setup, at just a fifth the price. Software like Roon and REW makes lossless playback and live DSP trivial everywhere. More than all this, information is abundant and precise, from tutorials to suites of in-depth measurements. There's no magic to it except the music.

But even if you like a bit of magic in your hifi, or your own house sound, there's more good options around a huge selection of fun things to mess around with - DIY, cheap valve amps galore, high quality ladder DACs and a resurgence of vinyl.

Alongside both the fun tinkering stuff and the super-transparent systems, there's still plenty of totally unarguable snake oil and misinformation to extort money from consumers: Expensive cables (and cable risers), unnecessary isolators and power treatments. The positive is I see much more thorough debunking of these things nowadays and I'm hopeful they will eventually disappear for good.

But the music scene now is different. Huge quantities of music are made continually. A lot of it is excellent, but with the amount to wade through it takes time to find. It's hard to strike a balance of variety and familiarity; most people will just resort to others' playlists on Spotify, often more as background noise than a primary focus. Production is better than ever in high end studios, but a lot of less-mainstream music is made at home and mixed poorly on headphones or small desktop monitors, which means high fidelity playback isn't even really relevant for it. That said, it's fantastic people can do what they now can at home on a tight budget, free from labels and the industry.

The biggest growing detractor of hifi in my opinion is the cost. Even though it's so much cheaper now, it's more about what money people have spare. There's better and better systems for under £500 or £1000, but fewer and fewer people who can justify or afford even that after their essentials. I am concerned that the 'hifi' journey for many newcomers will only go as far as a mediocre pair of wireless headphones or earbuds. At least these too are improving.

For over 100 years the reproduction of audio recordings has always kept improving, riding on the back of technological change. From wax cylinders to SACD, from Audio Cassette to DAT.

New materials and new ways of delivering music has (and always will) deliver better and better quality.

These days we have wireless speakers which are excellent, offering great value and perfect for outdoors, parties and casual listening. The arrival of cheap chip amps coupled with a set of budget speakers offer an amazing experience for a fraction of the price of a budget system from 20 years ago.

But what does this really mean? So the low end of the market has seen incredible leaps forward, but what about the mid to high end?

There will always be those who search for the Holy Grail, a money no object set up which undoubtedly sounds incredible, but for most of us who don’t have the budget for a dedicated listening room at home, a good quality system that sounds “right” is what we are looking for.

And I think that is the point. It’s about the sound.

Example: You have the Naim camp here and the Cyrus camp there, and they will both tell you why their chosen brand has the edge. But who is right?

All of them of course, like the music we enjoy, it’s all about how it sounds to you.

So yes HiFi has gotten “better”, but does it matter? Maybe not so much.

FreakyDeaky said:

So yes HiFi has gotten “better”, but does it matter? Maybe not so much.

Yes, it matters a lot. And there will be continued development of how music is captured, recorded and reproduced.