Luxury Hifi

Of all the technology products I play with and review on a daily basis, the one that puzzles me most is hifi. Here’s my problem. Above a certain level they all sound pretty fantastic to me. But as soon as I’ve got to love a hifi costing, perhaps £1,000 or more, I’ll read some disparaging comment about it and what used to sound sweet and powerful suddenly seems scratchy and lacking oomph.

This is 98 per cent a man thing, I suspect, but it’s truly disturbing, and most of what follows has happened to me. OK, you’ve splashed out a not inconsiderable sum on a name hifi, the kind of thing that you’ll see advertised in glossy magazines and for sale in a big department store, in which it is demonstrated in its own special listening room. This big brand system shouts serious at you, along with a price tag that might be two or three grand.

You take it home and you love it. You listen to it for hours, your female partner thinks it looks nice, you’re happy. But just a few weeks later, you see your brand referred to somewhere as mid-market, commercial consumer fodder. The price, you are told, is inflated because you’re paying for all that glossy advertising and the sound, well … it’s OK for ‘the kind of people that like that kind of thing’.

A year or so later, you can’t stand the thing any more and go to a serious hifi shop, where they snigger at you. They explain that what you really need is a system in which the CD player, the amplifier and the speakers are all made by different, little-known manufacturers, usually British or American.

This ‘high end’ system, they tell you, which will cost a little more (maybe four thousand, maybe five or six), may look a mess, but you’ll be hearing the real thing now. There are little surprises in store. ‘How are you for speaker cables?’ they’ll ask. You’re fine thanks, you have the old ones and they were something outrageous like £30 for the pair – this for mere wire. ‘Ah, they say, ‘really, something like that is going to undo all the good you’ve done by buying this system.’ And onto the bill will go some ‘serious’ speaker connecting wire. We could be talking £100 or more.

Your high end system is then the pride of your life, until the whole thing unravels again in exactly the same way. A few months later, you’re looking longingly at £10,000 or £20,000 systems. I discussed all this at lunch recently with hifi guru friend. High Street stereo, your typical up-to-£500 system, he said, actually hurts his ears. Most of the big brands for him, ‘are electronic components without soul.’ You need to be looking at something like Meridian,’ he said, where you might be spending £50,000 but you will understand the difference when you hear it. (Meridian is one of the most prestigious British hifi brands.) ‘So,’ I asked, explaining my journey through hifi thus far, ‘Is there anybody out there who, if I bought such a system, would say it still wasn’t the absolute best?’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘they wouldn’t totally dismiss it, but some may genuinely not like it and prefer some other brand. It’s like asking someone if he prefers a Ferrari or a Bentley. People have different tastes.’