Info about Hifi
Getting to know Hi-Fi systems
Music and sounds have always been a great source of inspiration, calmness and fun. Of course having a great song or music piece composed correctly is important for its impact and effect. However, an equally important point is how well are the sounds reproduced by the music system. This is where something like the Hi-Fi systems have come into prominence.
All of us have the typical radio alarm clock in our house. Typically we tend to use it for time keeping, but it does have a decent radio system too. The next time you get a chance, tune into some popular radio station and listen to some songs there. Given that these are popular songs, listen to the same ones when you are traveling in your car the next time. Lastly, listen to the same songs on the same radio in your boom box or other music system.
You would realize that the songs are the same and they are being played by the same station, but it just feels very different in the three sources that you hear. What is the difference? For a lay man, it could be that the one in the music system seems to sound the best and the radio clock is the worst. If it is the same song, what made you perceive it differently?
This is where the characteristics of the system become important and this is where Hi-Fi comes into play. Hi-Fi is the short for High Fidelity. In the electronics terminology, the word fidelity is the ability of the electronic system to reproduce the original signal: the better the reproduction the higher the fidelity.
The term fidelity is not limited to just music, but in reality that is probably one of the most common places where as end users we would see the impact of fidelity.
Though we really do not get to see Lo-Fi systems in daily life, they do exist. Typically these contain a lot of background sounds and other signal distortions. As a result, the sound that you hear is not just the original sound produced from the source; it has a lot of other noise which distorts it.
Hi-Fi as fancy as it sounds is not really a new technology at all. It is basically a marketing term that was coined in 1950’s to indicate that the music systems could reproduce sounds better. These did get immediate acceptance with the public as they were significantly better than the AM transmissions of that time.
Over the years there has been much advancement in the technology with stereophonic sound recording, better quality recording, bass boost, equalizers and others. These typically do not help reproduce the original sound, they just manipulate how the songs get played and enhances our experience. Even today it is the Hi-Fi systems that really make the music and songs sound so real and original. This is truly a great technological breakthrough that has helped the music and broadcast industry a lot and made our lives so much better.
Hi-fi systems really add musical richness to your set-up at your electronically-imbued home.