Reconnecting with music: in defense of home Hi-Fi and analog media
The first of a series of posts exploring home audio systems and some basics of building a system today
In Defense of Home Audio
Music has been an essential part of my everyday life for as long as I can remember. Growing up in the 1990s, many of my most vivid memories are tied to music in some way, shape or form, from blasting Radio Disney with my siblings, to recording mix tapes to share with friends (yes, actual tapes). Home audio systems, whether nice 2-channel systems, desktop stereos, boomboxes, etc, were always at home. Trips to CD warehouse, Media Play, and other long-gone music stores were special treats after a good report card or a birthday.
Shortly after I got my first job as a teenager, I built my own stereo system with mostly vintage pieces I bought off Craigslist. For around $500 at the time (2005-2006), I was able to put together a pretty great starter system. While my system has greatly evolved over the past 20 years, it will always serve an important place in my home and life. Unfortunately, home HiFi systems — especially 2-channel audio — have become a bit of a niche hobby, with all of the pros and cons that come with anything niche.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
My hope is for 2-channel home audio to make a resurgence into the mainstream along with physical audio media (either CDs, vinyl records, or tapes), and through a bit of background and tips and tricks I hope to be able to provide some necessary context on why and how to get started.
This first post will be rather long as it is going to dive into some history along with some of the current problems with the music landscape. It is a bit different from my other posts — so less music sharing and more information and commentary. It is adapted and expanded upon from a short PDF book I put together a while back as a resource for anyone wanting to get a surface level understanding of how to build a system, which I will make available in my subscriber chat at the end of this series sometime in the future.
A Brief History of Home Audio
Since the invention of the phonautograph in 1857, the recording and playback of sound and music has captivated generations of music lovers around the world. While the technology has vastly improved over the 150+ years since it’s inception, the motivation has remained the same - to record musical performances, like a photograph, to be enjoyed countless times in the future.
While capturing these unique musical ‘photographs,’ we are able to preserve cultural heritage and history, allowing us to peer back and explore music along with the context from which it arose and trace its evolution over time to reveal the bevy of inspiration and progression of ideas that produced the various flavors of music popular today and beyond.
With the invention of the phonograph in 1877, Thomas Edison took concepts from the phonautograph and adapted them for more mass market use and appeal, eventually selling well over 800,000 phonographs and 40 million records in a little over ten years. The gramophone, invented in 1888, was the first iteration that transitioned from cylindrical records to flat discs, similar to what we know and love today. Many of these early cylinders and discs were manufactured with wax (which is where the term comes from when people refer to records as 'wax' today), though in the 1930s, acetate came into popularity. These acetate disks were actually aluminum (or glass, in some cases), coated in lacquer, and cut using a specialized lathe directly to the disks.
In the 1920s, what we recognize as the modern record player was created and made this technology much more accessible to the everyday household, achieving wide mass-market adoption and popularity, with millions sold and many millions more records produced for in-home enjoyment of music. In 1948, the first vinyl record was produced by Columbia Records. This new material was much less brittle than wax or acetate records, and production using masters allowed for a large reduction in costs per record and a massive increase in scale. With small improvements over the decades since, this material remains the primary material used for record production today.
With the advent of car radios and headphones in the 1950s, cassette players in the 1960s, CDs in the 1980s, and digital audio in the 1990s, access to recorded music has become extremely affordable, accessible and portable for the everyday consumer.
Digital Music
While boomboxes, cassette players, and cd players helped make music portable, their need for physical media made them accessory units rather than replacements to home stereos. However, with the advent of the mp3 player/smartphone, portability took first priority. Combined with limited storage space on these new devices, this presented challenges and feedback that had real impact on mastering.
The ‘loudness wars’ that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, for example, are a great example of how various problems came to head — from the need for high compression to reduce file size, to a perceived preference from the public (whether accurate or not) for louder albums. Many albums released during this time period exchanged fidelity and dynamics for a loudness-for-loudness’-sake approach, often pushing the limits into clipping territory (which can actually damage speaker/headphone drivers).
The loudness wars mostly ended in the mid-2010s as volume normalization in streaming services became the norm. There is a shift today back toward more dynamic releases and somewhat normalized volume, though many releases still suffer from artificial boosting and overemphasis to some extent (especially bass frequencies).
Digital recording and mastering is quite sophisticated today, but with these developments came a drift toward over-production, scrubbing imperfections to the point of over-polishing and removing a lot of the ‘magic’ and energy that comes with live performance. Auto-tune is widespread (yes, your favorites are likely using it to some degree), and a lot of releases can feel fairly sanitized, regardless of genre.
It’s interesting observing videos of live sessions receiving thousands of comments from watchers saying they ‘prefer [it] to the recording.’ Even jazz suffers from this and can easily slip into an anemic production if not done right.
Bad production is not a new phenomenon, however. As long as music has been recorded, there have been poor recordings.
Streaming and the Devaluation of Music
Further, with the advent of streaming, the listening experience as a whole shifted quite drastically, often relying on algorithmically generated suggestions and trends. The days of radio DJs exposing listeners to new and interesting music are largely gone (they still exist, of course, but nothing like 30 years ago). The Tiny Desk series from NPR is a great example of what has largely been replaced by algorithms and genAI on many streaming platforms with the elimination of human playlist curators and the shift toward ‘personalized content.’
While conceptually personalized recommendations via genAI might sound appealing, these algorithms are not benign. A recent publication exposed Spotify for seeding playlists with ‘ghost artists’ to lower royalty payments and increase profit margins, highlighting a primary focus on profitability over true discovery and artist promotion. Replacing human curators allows them to execute this on mass scale incredibly easily. It is not a stretch to anticipate playlists seeded with genAI music in the very near future.
Streaming has also significantly impacted how music is valued. Many platforms vastly undercharge what they should for streaming music to actually be profitable in order to compete against loss-leaders (Apple, Amazon, etc), so they must pursue other avenues to earn revenue, thus driving the push toward cutting out royalty payments to small, emerging artists to switching to a podcast-first approach for advertising revenue. Companies like Apple that use their music service as a loss-leader hope to drive users to buying their hardware by limiting compatibility with only licensed and approved hardware (often their own and very limited partners). Others, like Amazon, use music streaming as a draw to pull people into their marketplace ecosystem. Regardless, all platforms can restrict or remove any content they deem unacceptable, which can have implications for political and artistic expression.
Streaming also puts us at the whim of platform-label agreements. Unfavorable deals can cause labels to pull entire discographies at a moment’s notice, restricting access to that music entirely. A recent example was UMG pulling their entire catalog from TikTok for months in early 2024. Purchasing physical media directly from artists (when possible) benefits everyone: the artists get the maximum amount that they can get from their work and you get a physical copy that will last as long as you care for it (and often has extras to add to the experience like art, liner notes, and sometimes things like posters, stickers, etc). While yes, the cost of an album can be more than the cost of a single month’s streaming service cost, it’s a remarkably unfair comparison — by design.
Physical media sales largely evaporated about a decade ago and while there has been a resurgence in vinyl records, they still represent a tiny percentage of overall music consumption. Many cite cost for why they do not purchase physical copies, but adjusted for inflation, vinyl records and CDs have remained relatively flat in pricing for the past 50+ years (not counting outliers like premium/audiophile editions and special releases). While there is a facet of this argument that points to a reduction in real incomes over that same period (which is a fair argument), I am of the opinion that the devaluation of music as a result of the normalization of unreasonably cheap streaming in the past nine years or so is primarily to blame for this perception.
The Case For Home HiFi
Home audio remains a very important piece of the overall music enjoyment experience, allowing for a much more relaxed and enveloping experience with music in the intimacy and privacy of home. In the bustling modern world, the luxury of disconnecting to slow down and 'enjoy the music' should not be taken for granted.
A home audio system centered around physical media forces us to be more intentional and selective about our music choices and consumption, putting together a library of music with individual importance. Listening to music in this way gives us space to fully enjoy a complete album as a single cohesive work, often discovering gems that get missed when simply boucing around recommended tracks and popular singles on streaming platforms.
Purchasing and maintaining a physical music library ensures you have access to the music that matters to you, no matter the state of streaming platforms, and maintaining an audio system at home can serve as a point of relationship building and community with family and friends where intentional music sharing and appreciation can create lasting memories and strengthen bonds.
Rebutting The Rebuttal: Cost
The most common complaint about putting together a home audio system is cost. While acknowledging that for some the reality of a home audio system is not attainable, often for those making this complaint it’s less about the real cost and more an issue of prioritization and the perception of value with music in general.
While flashy, high-end equipment gives most consumers sticker shock, these items are incredibly niche and mostly serve as advertisements to demonstrate new innovations for a brand. The uber-wealthy who purchase them help keep small businesses financially solvent so they can produce more affordable options for general consumers, passing down innovations through their lines over time. It’s much like looking at a flagship car model.
It is entirely possible to put together a nice starter system for less than the cost of a smartphone, or OLED TV, video game console, designer bag, etc. While this is not to shame or judge anyone’s spending habits, it’s simply pointing out the often dishonest argument that gets thrown around. An item not being a personal priority does not make it intrinsically ‘unaffordable’, it just means your personal perception of its value does not match its cost.
There are a bevy of new pieces of gear that can be purchased relatively cheaply, and gently used can be an even better cost proposition (if from a reputable source). Like buying a nice tv, smartphone, or computer, an audio system is an investment in entertainment and can become a big part of your home life — including socialization with family and friends.
While universal access to music and art via the internet has been wonderful for artist exposure (and music discovery), it has often devalued this work in the eyes of consumers. Artists can’t pay bills with exposure alone. Millions of albums of music on streaming services for less than $20/month is hardly better than pirating for the artists — and in the case of small artists receiving few streams per month, it essentially is pirating. This devaluation makes the cost of home audio systems often hard to justify for many.
The wholesale devaluation of music and art has paved the way for generative AI to step in, something we are already seeing with the advent of genAI music, movie scripts, artwork, etc. It is more important than ever to support musicians and artists producing original work. Once genAI starts becoming self-referential, it falls apart, and we are left with incoherent garbage.
For those struggling with the cost of home audio systems and buying physical media, I challenge you to cancel all of your streaming services. Imagine they all shut down tomorrow or decide that it is no longer profitable to operate. Spend time considering how valuable music is to your well-being and daily life experience. Look into all of the silent places where music once filled and reconsider the value of artists’ work, creating and sharing their music with us. $30 for a record starts to feel cheap for the many hours of enjoyment we receive from an album we love — often a culmination of years of work at large expense.
What’s Next
It’s important to understand that this isn’t an either/or proposition. One does not need to abandon streaming completely and ‘embrace analog’ to enjoy music, and it is not at all what this article is recommending. This is a challenge to reprioritize music, reassess it’s actual value, and make informed choices on how you support artists and consume music.
I personally maintain two streaming subscriptions and supplement them with my physical music collection. I’ve built a home system that can handle both with ease. Combining the conveinence and discovery aspects of streaming with a physical collection of favorites diversifies listening experiences. Not to mention, there are hundreds of thousands of albums that have never been digitized and made available on streaming — massive catalogs of incredible music just waiting for you to stumble into them at a shop.
Adding services like Bandcamp into your music discovery and listening mix will allow you to discover many new independent artists and purchase releases directly from them. Often physical releases all come with digital download copies as well.
For those that struggle with storage for physical media, there are also ways to purchase digital copies of albums online and create home servers to store them. While I will always recommend having physical copies of any media you purchase, it’s important to acknowledge other solutions for those in small spaces as well (and I will).
Ultimately, in a world focused on eternal productivity and multitasking, disconnecting to focus on the intentional enjoyment of media like music, books, art, or otherwise is an important way to stay emotionally grounded.
In my next part of this series, I will give an overview of a basic audio system and components from a very basic system to a bit more complex, with future articles focusing on specific components.
Questions?
Until my next post for this topic, what are some questions you would like answered regarding building a home audio system? Feel free to ask away in the comments!
One other thing... a hi-fi system is much more interesting focal point for a living space than yet another giant flat screen TV.
matt, loved the article. As someone who has had many “shape shifting” systems over the past 50 years, I’m looking forward to your future articles. My only question at this point is what system are you currently running? Thanks