MyFi is scientific - HiFi is marketing

This title, which I admit is provocative, needs some premises.

Obviously I do not deny the fact that the pursuit of quality reproduction of music makes sense and should be pursued but it is important to understand some principles and scientific evidence that underlie this practice (music listening) however ignored and underestimated by the majority of professionals and enthusiasts they may be.

What I assert below derives from personal studies and expertise not only in audio reproduction but also in applied Audiology being part of my professional expertise and experience.

SOUND DOES NOT EXIST !

The term sound refers to the physical phenomenon of an alteration in the pressure of the air around us, and it follows as first evidence that in the absence of air this phenomenon does not exist as it does in cosmic space. Having clarified this trivial but not too much the next consideration in the physiological field is that this "vibration" is perceived by the auditory system with the outer ear and the inner part transforming the physical air pressure into an electrical signal and reaching through the auditory nerve to our brain. This very important organ has evolved and refined to enable human survival to defend from danger and to intercept prey to catch for food. This wonderful sense has enabled evolution. Man is not the living being with the "best" hearing among the existing species, but his overall evolution has allowed him to position himself at the top of the food chain. This premise serves to clarify that this fundamental sense has the characteristic of being extremely subjective in its level of functionality and that the brain fulfills a role of compensating and interpreting what it receives from outside. I clarify this aspect below. From birth and the first few years of life, hearing ability changes with a slow and inexorable decline in sensitivity to pick up sounds of low intensity and particularly high frequencies. This happend at different speed and level due the lifestyle of the person. By convention, the audible frequency range is defined as 20 to 20,000 Hz. This frequency spectrum is perceived by the whole of the various components of the auditory apparatus, in particular we have a perception of sound pressure by "airway" involving the outer ear composed of the pinna (a true conveyor), the ear canal, the acoustic membrane to which the bone system consisting of anvil , stirrup and hammer. At this point the "magic" of transforming the mechanical vibration into an electrical signal takes place by the middle and inner ear, which incidentally is one of the most delicate and complex organs in the human body that still has aspects of its functioning that are not completely clear. Up to this point for many of you nothing new, but it is important to add a lesser known aspect of the physiology of auditory perception, the so-called "bone pathway." The already mentioned bony system of transmission of vibrations from the outside to the inner ear turns out to be sensitive also to all other vibrations that the human body "picks up" with its large surface exposed to the sound pressure that "envelops" it. Sound waves that hit the skull but also other parts of the body inevitably excite it even if to a weak extent and for a limited frequency spectrum. A real band-pass filter with an upper limit of about 3KHz. In audiology, selective hearing deficits are found to occur due to reduced speech comprehension as a result of head trauma that "desensitizes" bone perception. In these cases, to highlight and measure this type of hearing loss component, audiometry is performed where a "vibrator" excites the part of the skull located behind the pinna with a pulsed signal and at the same time a continuous signal is introduced by air with a masking function in order to avoid false findings, obviously involuntary, on the part of the subject examined. A peculiar feature of bone perception/conduction of sounds is its poor or even nonexistent binaural separation."What has just been said helps to justify the relatively poor binaural separation of the entire auditory system, sparse but present just enough so that the temporal latency of the perception of a sound present between the right and left ears allows the brain to "localize" the direction of origin of the sound itself. A final mention on the physiology of acoustic perception should be made for that very personal phenomenon of compensation and interpretation of sounds by the brain that in short allows even those with hearing deficits of various kinds to compensate to complement deficiencies if these fall within acceptable levels that turn out to be much larger than commonly imagined anyway. Have you ever wondered how aged  music professionals in various roles can fulfill their jobs? Experience plays an important role, but truly remarkable is the role of the mind in enabling these people to do their work with such hearing that if personal audiometries were made public they would make lovers of FLAT frequency responses within 0.5 dB wince !

Although in brief we have mentioned just enough to highlight how the ability to hear and therefore to listen to music is something unique in its quantitative and qualitative parameters not to mention the cognitive component nurtured by the level and amount of experience of listening to live unamplified music.

Once it is understood how complex, articulated and susceptible to "personal" variations of the enjoyment of the sound signal, in our case MUSIC, actually  a conscious enthusiast has no difficulty in assuming an inescapable truth : sound, music is formed inside our minds and this sensation created by the brain stimulated from outside is subject to countless variables of intensity, frequency, phase, harmonics etc. .. I could go on but I think the above is sufficient to justify that listening is a strictly personal phenomenon and as such, practically any disquisition on perceived "quality" must come to terms with this inescapable aspect. What has just been asserted, even if unintentionally, supports the argument of those who rely almost exclusively on measurements for the assessment of sound quality. This mode certainly eliminates the inevitable "subjectivity" present for the reasons described above.  That said, I am absolutely convinced that to date both electrical and acoustic measurement instrumentation has not reached such levels of sophistication that it can be uniquely entrusted with the task of assessing the quality of reproduction of a musical message.

In addition to this aspect there is an essential component of the reproduction of recorded music (record product regardless of technology and medium) expressed on the PHILOSOPHY page of this site.

In short even if we had tools precise and complex enough to evaluate all components of the musical signal these tools would be "useless " due to the absence of an absolute REFERENCE.

So what  ?

Music reproduction in the current state of the art needs an approach that excludes neither the nevertheless valuable measurement tools (indispensable for designing and verifying correct behaviors of equipment) nor subjective evaluation as a tool for "fine-tuning" by designers and as a method of evaluation and appreciation by the enthusiast.

It requires a conscious attitude to peacefully question the "certainties" of industry GURUs, the advertising shrieks of HiEnd marketing, or even just the genuine opinion of the "experienced" friend.

Music is a recreational activity that should provide personal pleasure, and as such no one should feel that he or she lacks the skills to evaluate its goodness.

Returning to the initial provocation now you have understood why SOUND, MUSIC exists only in your mind and as unique human beings your evaluation besides being pertinent is the only one that should guide you in your personal choices without reverential fears toward anything or anyone.