Hi-Fi Nerds have long been the butt of jokes. Our obsession with sound quality is seen as something suspect and even perhaps slightly unhealthy. Almost fifty years ago the comedy due Flanders and Swann wrote A Song of Reproduction which affectionately (?) ridiculed the man whose sole interest was high fidelity sound, and ‘…never did care for music much’. Smug bastards.
Okay – so most rabid hi-fi enthusiasts are deeply boring sad gits. Nevertheless, our mania for better sound and constant improvement had many positive benefits. It was the engine that powered a billion upgrades, and kept a lot of people – manufacturers, retailers, musicians – in work. It justified the continuous re-recording of music – bringing you ever-closer to the impossible dream; a sound so good it almost seemed real.
