A good hifi system stays with you. In time your ears attune to the sounds and signals. The music you chose it to play is personal, emotional, and says something about who you are. The music you play is an output of your interests. The way your brain hears it though the machine, they way you process emotional data. The choices you make when assembling it. Picking the components. Setting it up in the room. Angling the speakers. In an age when every decision we make online is data for someone to harvest, in this analogue setting, you are the farmer, the harvester, the cook and the diner. It’s a personal moment.
Yet every so often we are required to reassess this system. To redesign its signature sounds. We pick amps and speakers, and sound sources that fit our changing lifestyles and tastes. As one hifi seller told me, our best customers visit us every 15 years or so.
This year it was my turn.
Prologue
About 20 years ago I worked in a record shop. It was my first summer job, having turned 16 that month. With my newly minted national insurance card, I applied for the job. The interview was brief. I was left alone in a room and asked to write down my top 5 favourite albums of all time, while the manager went out back for a smoke.
My list, comprising, Rolling Stones ‘exile on main street’, Erika Badu ‘big momma’s gun’, Badly Drawn Boy ‘the hour of the bewilderbeast’, Bob Dylan ‘desire’ and Neil Young ‘tonight’s the night’ passed the test. I was in. Music started to pour into my life at a new rate. Disposable income and a shopful of albums to play at work was a heady rush.
Lunchtimes were used to visit a nearby Sony shop, in which I tried and tested everything they had while I saved. Through kindness, and possibly the promise of relief from my questions, the salesman gave my a heavy discount on a slightly better than entry level system. One that would stay with me through university and flat moves. I would use it to review all the records I would write about across the publications that would have me. It was reliable, it sounded great. And like all great things, I never fully appreciated how good it was.
It wasn’t until an audiophile visited and gave it an unprompted seal of approval. It made music sound great and is partly responsible for the many professional investigations I made into arts criticism.
Eventually the system failed. Mid COVID. The hifi stores were closed, and all my disposable income was being consumed by home renovations, trying to get my house to a liveable state.
Recently I began to replace the old system, and now that this process has pretty much concluded, other than some residual anxieties and nagging what ifs, I wanted to share some things I’ve learnt about home stereos, some changes in technology I’ve noticed, and what the process has taught me about music.
Audio Origami
There’s a great deal of conversation today about media format. Streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Tidal champion themselves with their adoption of high fidelity technologies.
Master Quality Audio is designed to capture and reproduce the sound of the original studio master recordings in a file that’s small enough to stream or download. Developed by Meridian Audio Ltd and announced in 2014. It delivers high-resolution sound files while minimising the file size and bandwidth needed for streaming.
MQA works by using a process called ‘audio origami,’ which ‘folds’ the audio data into a smaller file without significant losses in quality. This folding process allows for the inclusion of very high-frequency audio information, which is typically lost with other compressed audio formats. When played back on an MQA-enabled device or software, the file is ‘unfolded’ to fully reproduce the sound as intended by the artists and recording engineers.
Bob Stuart, the co-founder of Meridian Audio and the lead developer of MQA, adopted the term as like origami, it doesn’t cut or alter the original material.
MQA uses digital signal processing techniques to encapsulate the full frequency and dynamic range of the audio into a file that’s not much larger than a standard CD-quality file. It does this by analysing the audio and using a ‘lossless’ folding technique to encapsulate information about the original recording. This information can then be unfolded during playback.
The MQA process also includes other aspects, such as Temporal Deblurring that corrects the timing errors (blurring) that can occur in the original analog-to-digital conversion process, promising to deliver clearer, more accurate sound. For me this is the most significant advancement for the listener, and an issue that I’ve routinely come up against when listening to digital music, whether that’s on A/B (analogue) or even D (digital) class amplifiers.
To experience the benefit of MQA, you need compatible playback equipment that can decode the MQA files. Many digital audio players, streaming services (like TIDAL), and DACs (digital-to-analog converters) now support MQA. However, even if the playback device is not MQA-compatible, users can still listen to MQA files, but they will only experience CD-quality sound, rather than the full high-resolution audio that MQA is capable of delivering.
It’s the music industry so there’s always going to be a territory war
There is another product on the market in Dolby Atmos, which Dolby Laboratories is using its dominant market access to roll out across commercial and home cinemas, as well as some headphones. Atmos produces a 3D audio environment which suits artists such as Sunn O))) who perform live in quadrophonic sound, and whose latest release deploys it. Whether we see an Atmos version of The Flaming Lips’ experimental CD box set Zaireeka, which is four CDs designed to be played simultaneously, we can assume that it’d only be possible by compressing all four discs onto one remastered track.
MQA is not restricted to two channel stereo, the left and right speaker format, and can adopt equivalent technologies as Atmos. These two proprietary technologies have created a battleground for supremacy, in the same way we have seen with BetaMax and VHS.
The battle will continue as Apple Music, who are campaigning to return to the dominance of the iPod era, are continuing to adopt their own AAC file format, as well as incorporating Atmos. From what I have heard, and this is a sound based exercise, my faith is in MQA.
The arrival of both MQA and Atmos has drawn attention to an issue that audiophiles and vinyl enthusiasts have been debating for some time. The way the music feels on vinyl, an analogue pressing of an analogue sound, is more authentic to the music, and music fans have championed vinyl to the point that new vinyl printing factories have been built, and the lead in time to press the records has led to disruption and delay for artists wanting to release their music. Comically, while we have been watching this movement gain ever more traction, the audiophiles who can be credited to kickstarting the revival, are fast migrating to MQA. Shunning the ever increasing costs, and environmental impact of records.
It will be interesting to see if smaller record labels whose operating costs have been historically cushioned by the preference for vinyl records will look to republish their music in MQA. Smaller independent labels such as Not Not Fun, who have featured extensively on this blog, have limited their vinyl releases, with cassettes and digital as their dominant formats.
I’m also keen to see if the renewed investment 3D playback will bring about a return of incredibly underutilised recording techniques such as holophonic sound, in which a millisecond delay is applied to either channel, moving the centre point of the sound in your head.
The battle of playback, format and music source is huge, and I’m surprised that music reviewers and sites have never really reflected on how unreliable their own music listening equipment will impact the efficacy of the music being reviewed. Even the difference between Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music can be great depending on the file uploaded by the record label. And I’m not just talking about the megahertz of the file. Compatibility between the file and the platform they’re uploaded on is an audible issue. Just have a go at listening to Burial ‘kindred’ on any digital streamer or YouTube. The playback is distorted, and the feeling you get from the track is lessened or lost. Most press officers share Bandcamp links or have embedded platforms with FLAC files, which are high quality but without and of the emergent origami software.
Musicians as bionic artists
It seems like an unfair treatment to channel a lot of music through particularly high end equipment. From listening to high end origami machines, or Digital Analogue Converters, as they are known. From what I’ve heard, listening to expensive machines, such as one at a hi-fi store, a dCS Rossini APEX Streaming DAC (£28k), it can reveal detail in the recording that would otherwise be impossibly to experience on lower quality stereos. I heard the spittle of Björk on her track ‘tabula rasa’. Although I’m not sure how much Björk wants her listeners to hear the saliva between her gums and bottom lip. This spittle is just one of the high frequency sounds that exists in every vocal note, but is otherwise just lost. Ok it sounds gross but the truth is, it sounds real. It’s sounds like the truth. It sounds like the human that made it, it sounds more intimate.
Played on a less high-end system you just hear the human, fleshy vocal that’s been multitracked, with the layers fed through a computer programme to make her voice sound bionic. It’s incredibly beautiful and I feel confident this limited recording on an “affordable” system is closer to what the musician intended for us to hear. So here’s the rub, in advancing, if not solving the problem of playback, these technologies will change the way artists think about compression and how they go about recording mastering their music. They will think more about what’s left in the final product. Not just what’s on the page, but what these origami machines will uncover.
Kanye and Mike Dean, to take a recent example, have thrived at producing music that’s very shapely, with clear gaps between the pitches and instruments. Their productions plays back well on phone speakers and club monitors. Just as hair metal of the 80s was designed for radio play and car stereos. A modern equivalent could be Apple AirPods Max, which are solid and reliable across all the genres I’ve tried. You can imagine musicians performing the new “car test” on them. It’s doubly reassuring when you see a musician you like wear the headphones, because you assume they’re going to be designing music that plays back truthfully on them.
Recording and production technology is advancing, and for me this means that home equipment needs to keep pace. It’s known that tube amplifiers and Klipsh speakers make the sound warmer and fuzzier. Provide a rock grit, but this style may struggle to express the unease, and discomforting nature that music concrete can harness, nor the quick, microtonal shifting of computer music. I’m not saying these products won’t work for you. It’s just that I reckon that some systems are made for a certain era of music, and generation of listener.
I think what I’m getting at here is that if the music you listen to was recorded on 4-track demos, the music is going to suit something simple, like a portable speaker, as it’s going to make your music sound great. A big posh system is made for things like Deutsche Grammophon’s orchestral recordings. So there’s less benefit going to a lot of effort, only to make most of your collection sound crappy. I find a lot of comfort in this thinking, because it really took the pressure off feeling like I needed to keep turning up the dial in order to maximise the outcome. There’s a limit to how much sonic integrity is required to optimise enjoyment from the playback. Push too far and it backfires.
There seems to be a general trend towards detail and clarity, and away from the warm, rocking stereos of the 70s. Whether this is driven by changes in our listening, or the technology itself advancing. It’s tricky to go back to the old style, once you’ve heard something that’s so precise it places you alongside the musicians in the studio.
Whether the set-up is low or high end, whether it is warm, detailed or musical, nothing is consistent. Things that sound great on one system will fail on others. I was blown away by the balance and tonality of the Spendor A4 and A7 speakers, which perform well with Glenn Gould’s Schoenberg or Cecil Taylor, but given modern/progressive computer music such as Holly Herndon or Two Shell and they struggle. It’s like they can’t make sense of what’s being pushed through them. Like the music is in a language they’ve never heard before.
The use of Master Quality Audio on Tidal and other streaming platforms, on origami machines such as the BlueSound Node 2i, is incredible and I would recommend everyone to move towards these players. It’s going to take some time before all the music I listen to moves onto MQA streaming, maybe never. So I’m not ready to let go of my records and CDs just yet. But for cost and convenience (and the environment), MQA is the way. It’s going to change the way you listen to music, the type of music you listen to, and ultimately, the type of music people make, and the techniques and technologies they use to record.
What does a modern hi-fi system look like?
If you’re looking for a new speaker and amp pairing, I feel a budget of about £1500 is plenty when buying second hand. Definitely visit a number of hi-fi shops until you find one that sells brands that are to your taste. And where the people working there are your kind of people, who you can talk to about music. I know this sounds silly, and I’m sure that when you’re reading this there’s going to be a wall of skepticism between us. Talk of products and cables is naturally off-putting. It feels disconnected to the feelings that music can elicit, and which we are chasing. It’s quite easy to feel some distance from the ecstasy of music when talking to a bloke dressed like an electrician in cargo pants and a polo shirt, discussing items that may cost the same as rewiring your house.
As tempting and accessible as it is to search out reviews online, you just have to accept that this activity involves some time and travel. Listen to as much as you can in store. When taken slowly and patiently it was enjoyable. And I would avoid taking any sonic advice from the audiophile media, stereo reviewers, What Hi-Fi, or vloggers. They’re often charming talking about specific items, sometimes guilty of over reliance on vague language and technical data. They listen on set-ups based on what they have from the suppliers or at home at that given moment, and don’t have an extensive variety of products at their disposal, compared to an independent store. Specifically, it’s unlikely they’re listening to it on the configuration you end up with. So it’s quite limiting to how helpful they can really be.
I would recommend buying your stereo on eBay. As with a car, the economic sweet spot is 3-5 year-old second hand equipment. Old enough for the price to have heavily depreciated, and new enough to retain its resale value.
You don’t need to get the top spec of a product’s range. If you ever get the itch to further tune your set-up, you can sell your current model for an updated version or the next one up in the range. It’ll still be compatible with your system, and in the exchange of selling your old one, the cost difference will be minimal. I feel like getting this thing right is a process, that you don’t need to bullseye with your first throw. You could also look at getting some higher spec cables or power leads. The most important part is finding a sound that works for your ears, the music you listen to, and the feelings you seek.
The best advice I was given was to start slowly and build from the ground up. Find an amplifier producer you like (I found Rega, Hegel, Marrantz, Audiolab, Roksan, Cambridge Audio, and Atoll all sounded pretty good to me). Popular producers and models are more readily available and likely to stay in production, circulation and repairability.
At the moment there’s possible more value in buying an integrated amp that’s good at just working to stereo speaker outputs, (compared to active speakers or an all in one media player). Most manufacturers will have a ‘no bells and whistles’ amplifier that capture the core engineering of their high end products, and which are designed to drive more modest speakers. For clarity, integrated amps package pre amps and power amps in one box. Alternatives that include for headphones and/or DACs mean the amp is packing in a great deal more system into the casing, to the impedance of engineering and value for money. I don’t know anyone who plugs their headphones into their amp, and DAC design is so quickly accelerating that you’d eventually outsource that technology to a separate device.
Once you’re there start to pair the amp up with different speakers in store, until you find a long running series that really sings with the amp. You probably don’t need ones that big, unless your living room is oversized, a pair of 80w bookshelf numbers will do fine.
If you’d like to know what system I plumbed for in the end, after much testing, reselling, shop visits, friends’ advice, deliberating, and websites visited: Rega Elex-R (2018 model,£380, eBay), Kef LS50s (£550, eBay), BlueSound Node 2i (£220, eBay) Rega P3 (£650, new), Chord ClearwayX Analogue RCA (£100, new) and QED XT40 speaker cables (£100, new). I wouldn’t say I’ve reached some sort of sonic heaven with this set up, but I’m extremely happy with it, and it’s been affordable to me, incrementally assembled. It’s really been a matter of patience and a sprinkle of expectation management. I now want to listen at home. It makes me pay more attention and I find myself enthralled. Whether that’s deep listening or daydreaming within the music. For me, that’s the feeling the right stereo will create.
I think about my old stereo and the signature tones it used to make. How it would hum out my music, how I would turn up the gain and the sub-woofer. To chase a sound of the past or chase the technologies of the future, are both awkward thoughts when trying to listen to the music in the moment. Thoughts that are probably best parked to one side.
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