With everyone having computers, mobile phones, and MP3 players, is there a place for home audio systems in our digital age?

Music has always been a huge part of my life. I listen to it every day. My parents were heavily into music and still are – my dad favoured the electronic synth era surrounding me with Gary Numan growing up, while my mum took the more pop route with Steve Harley, Elvis Costello, and Dr. Hook.

In the late 80s, my dad had a Sharp home stereo system with record deck, AM/FM radio, and twin high-speed dubbing cassette deck. The record deck featured state of the art linear tracking and could play the other side of a vinyl without needing to flip it. It was amazing to see the arm go across and then rotate and disappear underneath and then start playing. Skipping forward/backward and play/pause was done via ‘full logic’ buttons rather than manually lifting and placing the arm.

I remember him buying a CD player for it, that came from a friend. It didn’t match the rest of the entertainment system; it plugged in to the auxiliary jacks on the back of the stereo and was the first CD player I had seen. I was still a pre-teen then, and I didn’t own any compact discs, just a few vinyls my parents sent my way: One Step Beyond by Madness, One Small Step by Apollo II, and Too Shy by Kajagoogoo to name a few.

I was under strict instructions not to use my dad’s entertainment system. It was his pride and joy. Of course when my parents were out I had a play – who wouldn’t. The lure of the magical silver discs was too strong.

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My Experience

A few years on in the early 90s I got my own CD player, a little all-in-one boom box, and I started building my CD collection. It mainly consisted of acid house, early dance, and 80s new romantic stuff. The love of decent sounding music saw my equipment grow to a mini Aiwa hi-fi with wall mounted speakers and then connecting my computer to it.

Even their hi-fi section looks nothing like it used to, filled with micro systems aimed at offering a glorified CD player with USB, Bluetooth, or audio dock obviously aimed at pleasing both markets. There are, of course, dedicated audio equipment stores and websites, but even these are being taken over by the docks and mini systems in a bid to.

The start of the MP3 era was significant. Music no longer needed to be in physical form. Tracks could be stored on your computer and instantly played, with WinAmp ruling the media players. The MP3 scene started the highly controversial illegal file sharing saga with the likes of Napster taking the limelight.

Portable music was even more important to me – it was a means of escaping when doing my paper rounds, walking to work, and now in general day-to-day use. From portable cassette players to CD players to MiniDisc recorders and then to iPods and finally the shift to music on my phone.

Over the next decade, I got married and had kids. My CD collection shrank, as did my audio equipment. I went from a giant Kenwood stack system with speakers that could clear your cobwebs for you, down to just a computer with decent speakers, and then further down to a laptop. My shelves and shelves of CDs turned into disc space on an external hard drive.

Music downloads became legit, and record companies got in on it. It was suddenly the likes of Apple taking charge of music distribution. Record stores began to close as physical sales dropped in favour of downloads, streams, and online videos.

I no longer listen to music pounding out on a stereo. I listen to my music on my Mac or via earphones on an iPod/iPhone.

Goodbye Hi-Fi

The Kenwood system went in my young son’s room as his interest in music started. Living in the digital online and YouTube age, he quickly moved from the CDs he was given to having music on his computer and phone too – although played through the system to sound better.

A few months ago, the large Kenwood system was sold off due to lack of use and taking up too much space, and for the first time ever there was no longer a decent high quality standalone music centre in our house.

My CD collection is down to a few gems that I don’t want to part with for nostalgic reasons but rarely come out – as I have nothing except a DVD player or the external drive on my MacBook Air to play them on.

Hi Fi Format

It’s a Generation Thing

Even my dad, who once prided himself on his home audio system in its own glass fronted cabinet, no longer has a giant entertainment system, instead opting for a smaller all-in-one audio dock with CD/DAB. He gets on fairly well with technology and tends to use his phone and car for music.

My generation seems to be the last who has a relationship with physical media for audio. My son of 13 doesn’t own a single CD, while my son of 11 and daughter of 9 have a few – but all of them prefer to use their mobile phones or just stream music or watch them on YouTube.

My youngest of 5 is likely to grow up never walking into a shop and buying a CD. Everything will be digital, instant, and disposable. He will look at my CDs like my older ones looked at me when showing them a personal cassette player or when my dad pulled out a reel-to-reel player in our garage.

Vinyl might be making a comeback, but CD sales are in serious decline. The vinyl resurgence is likely to be short-lived, a strange niche. For some serious audio lover, CDs lacked that warm feeling that a crackling 12” with its immense sleeve artwork gave them. Nothing physical overtook CDs – we entered the download and streaming era. While I am happy to download music, I don’t like the idea of streaming. I like to have something I can control. A disk full of MP3 files (with the option to redownload if needed) is a happy medium for me.

Quality

There does seem a lack of sound quality or perhaps a lack of interest in sound quality since MP3 players and mobile phones had the ability to play back MP3. The files themselves can be very high quality, but it is the equipment used to play them that lets it down. There is nothing worse than someone sitting their phone on a desk and playing out music on it – all flat, bassless, and interrupted by Facebook notifications every other song. Devices are too small to reproduce quality music no matter what audio technology or speakers are placed in it.

The best you can hope for there is to link it to an audio dock or decent Bluetooth speaker.

For Me

Just because I don’t own a hi-fi anymore doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate good sound quality. My audio collection might be stored on my iPhone for convenience, but I rarely play it directly from the phone. I have a decent pair of EarPods for personal listening and a good quality Bluetooth audio speaker for when I feel I want to hear music out loud.

Writing this article on my MacBook Air, it is connected to a Bluetooth speaker and I have iTunes running in the background banging out some speed garage mixes.

Ten years ago I would still be using my computer for music, but attached to a hi-fi sound system.

Ten years before that I would have popped a CD in my hi-fi.

However times change.

Buying Audio Equipment

Whilst writing this article, I went online and looked in Argos – a long established UK catalogue shop – at their home audio section. It is dominated by iPod docks, Bluetooth speakers, and small portable systems. Even their hi-fi section looks nothing like it used to, filled with micro systems aimed at offering a glorified CD player with USB, Bluetooth, or audio dock obviously aimed at pleasing both markets.

There are, of course, dedicated audio equipment stores and websites, but even these are being taken over by the docks and mini systems in a bid to keep up with the modern world – and of course to stay open. Individual components all linked together or giant hi-fi systems seem to be a thing of the past or a thing for audiophiles.

Interested in vintage audio gear? Join our Low End Audio group on Facebook and visit our Low End Audio section here on Low End Mac!

Conclusion

Most people these days have no need for a tape deck or record player, and some don’t even need a dedicated CD player, so while the age of the dedicated home stereo system might be a niche market nowadays, most of us still like quality playback when it comes to our music.

Portable music quality and music on your computer is vastly better than it was ten years ago, but we have lost the golden age of dedicated equipment and the act of sitting down and listening to a new album. Everything seems much more busy. More portable. More instant. More disposable.

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If you own a Mac, you already have a high-resolution media file server at your disposal, with very little tweaking required to pass high-quality audio to your audio gear. I recently decided to set up my Mac in this way, to deliver hi-res throughout the signal chain--from my music library, to the player, to the DAC, to my preamp, amp, and loudspeakers (or preamp to headphones). Here is how I did it.

Building Your Hi-Res Music Library
The process starts with ripping or downloading music files directly to either your Mac's internal hard drive or an external drive, or designating a cloud site for your file storage (more on this in a minute). I store my music library on a 3TB Seagate external drive. Many people prefer to use an external drive because loading up your main hard drive with music files can potentially slow your computer's overall performance, especially when you get to the end of your drive's storage limits.

Opinions will vary on what constitutes hi-res audio, but I set my sights on resolutions equal to or better than 24-bit/96-kHz. We all know that your system is only as good as its weakest link, so I started with either 24/192 or 24/96 FLAC files. Hi-res files may be offered in the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) or AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) format, as well as DSD (Direct Stream Digital) and MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). DSD is the Philips/Sony system used to create the SACD (Super Audio Compact Disk) format, while MQA is a very clever codec that compresses the relatively little energy in the higher frequency bands to make the files smaller while retaining a hi-res result (it's also a good format for streaming services). To get the highest quality, you will want to avoid lossy formats like MP3 (Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-3), AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), and OGG (Ogg Vorbis, the name Ogg derives from the jargon word ogging) that sacrifice audio quality for file size. This was important when storage was expensive, but now storage is plentiful and cheap.

Hi-res music files are available for download from a number of websites, including: HDTracks.com,
primephonic, HiRes Download, iTrax.com, B&W's Society of Sound, Acoustic Sounds, Chandos, and�Blue Coast Records. If you're looking for suggestions on high-quality audio recordings, check out the reviews on our sister site, AudiophileReview.com. Here are a few great-sounding albums (all available as hi-res downloads) that I'd put on my list of desert island discs:

Santana: Abraxas
Mozart: Great Mass in C minor
Thelonious Monk Orchestra: At Town Hall
The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers
Bob Marley: Legend (you are on a desert island, after all)
Steely Dan: Aja
Jethro Tull: Aqualung

Cloud Backup
About a year ago, I grew concerned that my entire life's savings of music--some of which is irreplaceable original music from the various bands I've been in--was all in one place, so I looked to the cloud for a backup/disaster recovery solution. My current total storage need is approximately 2.4 TB. Apple's iCloud offers five gigabytes of free storage, which isn't nearly enough for my music files, so I opted for the 2TB plan that costs $20 per month. I had to leave some of my more esoteric albums off the iCloud drive to fit under the 2TB size limit.

Another cloud option is Google Drive, which offers 15 GB for free or one terabyte for $9.99/month; then it jumps to 10 TB for $99.99 monthly. Microsoft looks at storage a bit differently, tying its One Drive storage to the MS Office suite. When you purchase MS Office 365, you get 1 TB of storage. All your Excel spreadsheets, Word docs, and PowerPoint presentations are automatically stored there and are available for collaboration between users. There isn't anything preventing you from storing your music library there, but access is via Microsoft's Groove Music Pass, which is $9.99 per month in addition to the $99 annual cost of MS Office 365.

Amazon's Drive allows you to upload up to 250 songs for free. Subscribe to Amazon Prime ($99 annually) and get 5 GB of storage; for another $59.99 per year, you get unlimited storage. I currently use Apple's iCloud because I've been deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem from the first-generation iPod, but Amazon's value proposition is compelling. I am strongly considering making the switch. (If anyone out there has made the switch, I'd love to hear about your experience in the Comments section.)

Playback Software
Once you have begun to build your hi-res audio library, how do you play the files in a way that maintains their high bit and sample rate? I chose to download the VLC media player to my Mac (it's free) because it's capable of 24/96 and 24/192 native hi-res output. The VLC player can be downloaded here.

As an alternative to VLC, you might consider the VOX Music player, which is also free and can be downloaded here.

Why not just use iTunes? The iTunes Store only sells music in the compressed AAC format, and the iTunes player doesn't support the most widely sold lossless format: FLAC. Some hi-res file formats like AIFF may be played by iTunes but will not be at their native hi-res rates. Beware: If you convert a 24/96 FLAC file to ALAC, for example, you will not get the original file's full resolution.

Connections
There are three ways to get hi-res audio out of your Mac: 1) through an optical Toslink cable connected to the headphone output; 2) through a USB cable; and 3) through a standard stereo eighth-inch mini-jack connected to the headphone out--which will use the Mac's excellent internal DAC that supports up to 24-bit/192-kHz.

I suppose you could also count Bluetooth as the fourth way, but I'm not convinced that, even with A2DP negotiating between the transmitter and receiver the best CODEC available, you aren't losing audible quality in the wireless transmission.

Any of the above three connections ensures output of your audio files at the full resolution. Options one and two are still in the digital domain, so you will need to convert the signal to analog before sending it along its path that ultimately leads to your analog ears. The HTR archive is full of reviews that will steer you to a great digital-to-analog converter (DAC) at any price point. Just remember to make certain that the DAC supports the highest quality files in your catalog.

Hi Fi For Mac Os

The next component in line is either your preamp or integrated amp. My setup includes a tube preamp that has both a headphone output and individual right and left line-level RCA outputs, which then feed either my tube or solid-state amplifier (I have one of each). Either amp then leads to my loudspeakers. If I'm listening through headphones, they are fed directly from my preamp.

My Results
I am enjoying incredible results using my Mac as a hi-res server. When comparing hi-res FLAC files via VLC to music coming from my iTunes library at 16/44.1, the difference is truly amazing in terms of imaging, dynamic range, extended high and low frequencies, clear and detailed mids, and the all-important warmth, air, and intimacy. When listening to the same song, switching only the file resolution, the iTunes files sounded flat and one-dimensional. Don't believe me? I recently read an excellent open-access paper on our ability to hear differences with high-resolution audio that can be found here.

You Can Take It With You
Want to enjoy your higher-quality audio on the go? That's become a lot easier, too--thank to players like Astell & Kern's AK240, Sony's NW-ZX2, Onkyo's DP-X1, Questyle's QP1R, and HiFiMAN's HM802s and HM901s. Do these players offer an improvement over a basic standard-res player? Yes, but remember that your environment and choice of headphones will impact your ability to hear all the differences.

Final Thoughts
Of course, there are a lot of excellent hi-res digital audio players on the market that would make a great addition to your gear rack, if you prefer a dedicated component. But if you're looking for high quality on a budget and you already own a Mac, then why not work with what you already have right in front of you? My results were outstanding.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the importance of how the music came to exist in the first place. The composition, the quality of the musicianship, the groove (or the tempo in classical pieces), the production, the mix, and the mastering process ... all of these have great impact and ultimately contribute to what resonates with you. I've heard amazing music that was recorded in the 50s and really poor-sounding music that was recorded mere months ago ... so technology is one thing, passion another.

Additional Resources
� Chasing the Holy Grail of Audio at HomeTheaterReview.com.
� Examining My Love/Hate Relationship with Video Discs at HomeTheaterReview.com.
� What's the Ideal Speaker Driver Configuration? at HometheaterReview.com.