Word: hi-fi
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Some 1,000,000 Americans have done just that-and thus established a new and burgeoning industry. Each week about 3,000 more homes go hifi. A mere fad until recently, hi-fi has become a $250 million business (equipment sales have increased as much as 500% in some areas since 1952). There is a standard pattern: about two years after an area is saturated with TV, hi-fi moves...
...cycles," "decibels," "curves," "roll-offs." Pre-hi-fi sets were unable to top the violin's range (about 8,000 cycles per second) and thus were "unfaithful" to all instruments but bass drum, timpani, bass tuba, piano, French horn and trombone (played softly without mutes). So the hi-fi fan went all out for high frequencies...
...pursuit of this ideal, the hi-fi enthusiast still hovers anxiously over his treble and bass controls, giving rise to the story about the audiophile who went to hear a live concert under Leopold Stokowski and left the hall holding his ears and muttering: "Too much bass! Too much bass!" "High-fidelity sound," says one expert, "is like the term love. It means whatever you choose it to mean." Hi-fi is, in fact, an attitude-a kind of passion to reproduce music exactly as it sounded in its natural setting, e.g., a symphony orchestra in a full concert hall...
What It Takes. Behind the latest hi-fi labels on the records are few major new technological developments. Recording equipment is getting better all the time, but the process has been essentially the same since the general acceptance of the long-playing record, magnetic tape and the condenser microphone.* What makes records better today is not so much electronic as esthetic know-how. To recreate "concert-hall realism." the recording director jockeys heavy, sound-absorbing flats around the studio, hangs big curtains across the hall, or records the sound "dead" and pipes it into a reverberation chamber to liven...
What does hi-fi mean in the home? Manufacturers are mass-producing record players which they label hifi, to the indignation of dedicated audio fans, who insist on buying components separately (the fanciest equipment stores feature elaborate switching panels, so that customers can compare components on the spot). It is next to impossible, the dedicated argue, to buy a real high-fidelity rig in one box-the limited speaker enclosure will probably cause a booming bass or fuzzy drum rolls, and up to half of the price goes for cabinetry instead of equipment. The best buys among the package units...