Audio Accessories & Cables

High-end audio equipment is purported by the manufacturers to be the best, regardless of what it might turn out to cost. High-end audio equipment can be extremely expensive. It is sometimes referred to as cost-no-object equipment. more...

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Owners of high-end audio are either audiophiles or conspicuous consumers. Audiophiles run the gamut from budget to high-end in terms of equipment price range and are primarily concerned with the quality of music reproduction (accuracy with personal preferences).

Definition of 'high end'

High-end audio can refer to the build quality of the components, but more specifically, refers to the ability to reproduce a recording with the highest fidelity to the original performance that has been committed to the recording. Typical qualitative attributes that are scaled by audiophile publications and experts are accuracy vs. warmth, tonal color vs. speed, timbre, size of sound stage vs. depth (spatial origins), clarity, pace, timing etc, etc.

A theoretically perfect high-end audio system would create the illusion of the musical performers actually being present and performing right in front of the listener. There would be no sonic signature that imparts any clue as to the fact that the performance is a playback of a recording instead of a live performance by actual musicians in the listening room. This is obviously more important with performances involving acoustic instruments and without studio manipulations of vocals.

Professional recording studios

Professional recording studios seldom use high-end audio gear for mixing and monitoring recording sessions. Instead, studios use players, amplifiers, signal processors, and speakers that are built to very high standards. These speakers are referred to as studio monitors and are specially crafted to produce very accurate sound, reflecting exactly what is on the recording. Most high-end speakers will tend to add color or tone shaping the music so that it sounds "better". For this reason studio monitors must be used to ensure that changes being made to the audio are accurately represented to the engineer.

Publications that interested parties can peruse include Stereophile (US), Absolute Sound (US), Hifi News (UK) and Hifi + (UK).

Read more at Wikipedia.org