HiFi technology, which is an abbreviation of the word High Fidelity, which means high fidelity, aims to reproduce the sound you listen to in a way that is close to the original recording and performance. Basically, Hi-fi systems are the systems that can produce the sound closest to the real analog sound value, where the bass, mid and treble drivers are driven from separate layers and crossovers, and large woofers with 8 and 15 inch diameters are used. The main purpose of hifi players, hifi speakers and hi-fi headphones is to ensure that the music you listen to can be listened to comfortably in your home, as in a live concert, with minimum loss.
In hi-fi systems, which basically ensure that the original sound recording during recording can be listened to without interference, you need to know how to set up hifi system setups so that you can taste the taste you will get at the stage performance at home. The first thing to consider in hifi system installations is that the width of the environment where you will listen to the song or music is sufficient. The size of the system area in the hifi installation will directly affect the size and capacity of the hifi speaker you will use. Since hifi sound systems, which you can design according to your personal tastes, will offer you a perspective on life beyond listening to a song, setting up a comfortable and spacious listening room will increase your enjoyment of sound quality.
The second important issue is the sound format of the music and song you will listen to, whether you have installed a system consisting of active speakers with an amplifier, that is, a passive speaker and a hifi amplifier. Hifi systems gain meaning with audio files recorded in high resolution such as FLAC and WAV and stored in our hifi devices. Compressed audio formats such as MP3, which are traditionally used in online music platforms and music players, are considered insufficient for hifi freaks, which we can translate into Turkish as hifi lover, because they produce wider dynamic range and finer details compared to hifi audio formats. If you have chosen between high sound quality amplifiers and hifi speaker models, the next step is to develop your hi-fi system with DACs, which are digital and analog converters. Since the DAC will provide you with a cleaner and more natural sound with a hifi system, it will offer you high sound quality with wide distribution speakers, especially in hifi system setups prepared by paying attention to room acoustics.
Today, high-resolution audio has become the standard in the audio industry. This standardization process has caused hifi sound devices to become more accessible, allowing us to listen to high sound quality that exceeds the sound quality of traditional CDs, and high resolution sounds to be included in online music platforms. High resolution audio, also known as hi-res (high resolution) audio, requires recordings with higher resolution than cd quality, that is, higher resolution than 16bit/44.1kHz. Of course, the math is not that easy, taking a recording in mp3 format or a 16bit/44.1 kHz CD recording and resampling it as 24bit/192kHz does not classify this sound recording as Hi-Res Audio, since the original recording of the recording was not made in this way.
Well, if you are wondering whether DVD audio recordings are Hi-Res, we can answer yes to this question. Blu-Ray discs, along with DVD-Audio, are included in Hi-Res recordings, since DVDs have a 16bit/48kHz sampling rate and, by definition, Hi-Res audio recordings have multiples of 44.1kHz and 48kHz as sampling frequencies. In online music platforms, on the other hand, sampling rates and bit depths go up even higher. For example, FLAC, which is frequently used on online music platforms such as Tidal and Apple Music, has formats such as 24bit/96kHz FLAC and 24bit/192kHz FLAC song format. Of course, Hi-Res music formats are not only available as FLAC, but also 32bit/384kHz DXD, DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 hifi formats with stereo and multichannel multi-channel versions.
The sampling rate or sampling rate refers to the number of times per second that the analog signal is sampled during the digital audio conversion process. High sampling frequency and rate will contribute to a high quality sound conversion by contributing to the conversion from analog sound waves to digital sound.
The CD, which is heavily used in the audio industry, contains audio converted at 44.1 kHz/Second as the industry standard. This means that the original analog audio recording was sampled 44,100 times, while the high-resolution audio includes 96 kHz or 192 kHz sampling, a more accurate and complete reproduction of the original analog signal.
In contrast to the sampling rate, which determines how many times per second the waveform of analog audio is captured, the bit depth, which determines the accuracy of its measurements, reveals the damage that will occur in the quality of the sound in digital reproduction. In an audio file containing a low bit rate or bit depth, important information for digital reproduction will be lost.
We have examined above that an average CD contains a sampling rate of 44.1kHz/second, the sound information sampled 44,100 times contains the same number of samples per second of music and is encoded with 16-bit resolution. High-resolution audio formats, on the other hand, contain more than 16 million possible values per music sample, 256 times more accurate than CD with 24-bit resolution.
Hi-Res Audio Certification, that is, high-resolution audio certification, is a certification process approved by the Japanese Audio Association (JAS) and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), designed for high-quality musical performance and original sound reproduction. The Hi-Res Audio standard includes that the dynamic response range for the input and output and signal processing of the audio device must have at least 24 bits of data processing width and, accordingly, a sampling frequency of 96 kHz.
Lossy Compression
While the online music platforms Spotify and Apple Music usually offer CD-quality sound, they perform a great deal of downsizing. Compressing CD quality from 1,400 kbps to 256 kbps without loss of quality, these platforms remove information beyond our hearing capacity with compression techniques and codecs in theory. This is a topic often discussed by the hifi and audiophile communities, and is called lossy audio or lossy compression.
Lossless Compression
Lossless and uncompressed resolution audio that requires higher data transfer rates than CD and digital music platforms, 4,600
With its kbps data transfer, it is among the popular audio compression methods of recent times. Compared to other online music platforms such as Tidal and HDtracks, services that promise high-resolution audio offer high-resolution audio with appropriate file sizes, without removing information with lossless compression method and codecs they use.
For hifi music listeners, listening to music or watching movies with their system is only a short time and fast consumption
not included in its activities. Instead, hifi songs and content for hifi enthusiasts, called hifi freaks, require a certain lifestyle, so the areas of hifi usage are changing to this extent. The need for large space of hifi speakers and hifi setups brings the comfort that these systems can only have listening rooms such as villas and residences, and the pleasure given by the hifi lifestyle increases in structures such as mansions and residences.
Of course, if you are a hifi enthusiast and want to enjoy this listening experience with entry-level hifi speakers, hifi home theater
systems and applications may also be an option for you. These systems, which do not need a private listening room, can offer you the pleasures that you cannot reach with the popular speakers and amplifiers in the market, in the living room of your home. Even if you want to buy a hifi system but spend most of your time in moving vehicles such as caravans and yachts, hi-fi devices can be found for you among hifi systems.