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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...
Expensive equipment is not necessarily a guarantee against such hazards. But a good hi-fi system must include at least a turntable (price $60), a diamond stylus ($20) and magnetic cartridge ($15), a good amplifier ($100), and a loudspeaker system ($150) which now usually consists of at least one woofer (a speaker designed to reproduce low tones) and tweeter (high tones). Tweeters may be cones (sweet, not too brilliant), horns (plenty of highs and often tinny), or the newly developed electrostatic type, in which a flat sheet of metal foil moves in the open air. Most speakers still need...
...bane of hi-fi wives, perhaps because female ears are more sensitive to high frequencies than the male...
...strong dissenting opinion to all of hi-fi was filed by an indignant Briton who recently wrote to High Fidelity magazine: "I fail to see what pleasure there is in having to have a unit with as many as 16 knobs and selector switches . . . Me, I am so old-fashioned that my home-built [unit] has no tone control . . . Furthermore, I am sure that I have rumble-pardon...