As the old football saying goes, “Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships”.
It’s an elegant metaphor, whether it’s describing a musical ensemble, a football team or a hi-fi system. In essence, building the perfect hi-fi system is about balance as much as individual quality. The whole should amount to more than, or at the very least equal, the sum of its parts.
But balance is one of those concepts that can be hard to define, let alone to achieve. While a lot of it boils down to trial and error, there are certain guidelines that will aid and, hopefully, ease your path to sonic enlightenment.
Read on and we’ll explain how to assemble the right components and build the perfect hi-fi…
Set a budget
The first two questions you need to ask yourself are: what will you be using your system for, and how much are you willing to spend?
The latter relates to the former. It would perhaps be easiest to begin at the start of the chain – what will you be using as your source?
Each decision will have a knock-on effect: if you play all your music from your smartphone or tablet but still want a traditional hi-fi system, you’ll likely want something with Bluetooth, wi-fi, or Apple AirPlay 2 built-in.
If you play mostly vinyl, you’ll need to think about whether you want a turntable or stereo amplifier with a phono stage, or will buy a stand-alone phono stage; a separate unit will ensure greater versatility when upgrading in the future.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2021-Ausgabe von What Hi-Fi Sound and Vision.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2021-Ausgabe von What Hi-Fi Sound and Vision.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
YG Acoustics Carmel 3
On paper, the Carmel 3 from Colorado-based speaker specialist YG Acoustics has a credibility problem. They cost a huge amount of money but are small, rather plain-looking two-way floorstanders.
SME Model 20 Mk 2/Series V
SME launched the Model 20 turntable back in 1992. The partnering tonearm on our review sample, the now legendary Series V, dates back even further to 1986.
TOP FIVE LAUNCHES
Five products to look out for this month
Real slim shady...
FOR Slim profile, superb dispersion, soundstage AGAINST Can get a little expensive
THE BIG PICTURE
This projector-based home cinema set-up aims to please
MOVIES ON THE MOVE
Great pictures and quality sound-wherever you are
DREAM CINEMA
An incredible high-end home cinema experience, at a price
GAMING GEM
Serious gamers will be well served by this serious rig
CINEMATIC STUNNER
A truly immersive system for both gaming and movie nights
SOUNDBAR SUPERSTAR
The benefits of a surround set-up, without the fuss