Under constructionWe are still building the catalogue. Prices are not being tracked yet, and many sections are still being written — what is here is real, there is just not much of it.

Section 28 · Gadgets

Audio

High fidelity is the high-quality reproduction of sound, popular with audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts. Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat, uncolored frequency response within the human hearing range, which contrasts with the lower-quality lo-fi sound of inexpensive audio equipment, AM radio, or recordings made until the late 1940s. Listeners proved to prefer high-fidelity reproduction once the noise and distortion introduced by early sound equipment was removed. Source

Picture: M. Johnson · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The essentials

Checked against High fidelity. Source

High fidelity

hi-fi or rarely HiFi; high-quality reproduction of sound

Ideal hi-fi equipment

inaudible noise and distortion; flat frequency response in human hearing range

Lo-fi contrast

inexpensive equipment, AM radio, recordings made until the late 1940s

Bell Laboratories

began recording experiments in the early 1930s

Avery Fisher

amateur violinist; experimented with audio design and acoustics in the 1930s

Harry F. Olson

post-WWII orchestra experiment with hidden variable acoustic filter

33+1⁄3 rpm LP

microgroove vinyl record, lower surface noise, equalization curves

FM radio

wider audio bandwidth, less signal interference and fading than AM

Acoustic suspension

loudspeaker design by Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss

Golden Age of Hi-Fi

late 1950s to early 1960s; era of vacuum tube equipment

ABX test

blind test with samples A, B and unknown X

Compact disc dynamic range

about 90 decibels, exceeding the 80 dB of a concert hall