Imagine someone who likes to drink wine.
One day they become aware that a particular wine tastes exceptional. They notice a smoothness. It grabs their attention. And for the first time, they decide they’re going to intentionally seek out great wines—not just for enjoyment, but for adventure.
They browse wines more carefully. They ask questions. They pay attention to regions, grapes, ages. They pay attention to the sensations of drinking.
Soon they’re off to a winery. A sommelier takes them through several wines. The sommelier shares details for each, describes what to look for and how to think critically, answers (and asks) questions, and tailors the experience.
At this point, our wine-lover’s relationship to wine has expanded. The experience is no longer limited to the pleasure of sharing a flavorful drink, catching a buzz, and conversing with friends. It’s now that, and at the same time, it’s a nuanced, textured, and thoughtful experience.
This is connoisseurship. To attend so carefully to a sensory experience that it becomes more engaging, intellectually stimulating, and all-round more enjoyable. It’s the further enhancement of an experience that was already worthwhile, by connecting with it in more ways.
It can apply to the experience of coffee, food, cinema, automobiles, travel, podcasts, games, clothing…anything that is sensory and offers something deeper to appreciate.
Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash
Just as fine wine enhances the enjoyment of wine drinking by adding a layer of sensuality, so too does hi-fi enhance the enjoyment of music listening.
But to tap into this enhanced experience, we must encounter a sommelier of sorts, a tutor who can show us what to look for and how to appreciate it.
This post aims to be your sommelier.
It will help you judge hi-fi gear you might be considering for purchase, of course. But it will also make every listening experience more stimulating and immersive by giving you perspective and awareness.
Note: For the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus on the experience of listening to reproduced music. This will exclude the nuances of music itself—such as the interplay of genres, the structure of albums, and so on. That’s another conversation worthy of attention and appreciation.
Okay to begin, let’s break things down the way a sommelier would.
The “parts” of a listening experience.
In wine, there’s much to learn. Connoisseurs consider the sight, nose, palate and analysis—and for each there are more considerations. Smells and tastes are described with reference to fruits, herbs, spices and other earthen sensations.
Here we’ll keep things simpler.
When paying attention to how music is presented by a hi-fi system, these are the different considerations you might focus on:
- Bass: Depth & grip
- Treble: Presence & smoothness
- Imaging: Soundstage & separation
- Timbre: Warmth & clarity
Four areas, each with two considerations. Below we’ll dive into each.
Naturally, it takes several listening sessions where you’re paying attention to the nuances before you can make absolute judgements. Listen critically but once (to one system) and you can’t be sure if say, the bass is fully extended.
After multiple listens however, you’ve heard more of what’s possible, so you begin to tell when bass (or anything else) is lacking.
How to judge bass response
This is often the most obvious audio character. It’s the part you can feel as much as hear. It’s also the part that the cheapest gear tends to leave out.
That’s because bass—the lower band of frequencies that humans can hear—requires bigger, stiffer speaker drivers and bit more amplification to get right. Smaller speakers and cheaper amps will often “roll off” a lot of the bass frequencies, which means they don’t even try to play them. (This occurs in the crossover, which filters the audio.)
That’s why you want to listen for depth (or bass extension).
How low do the lows go? Low enough for the full recording to come through? A system with depth will produce a big, immersive sound you can feel. Without it, the sound will leave you saying words like “thin” and “anemic.”
Here’s the thing about roll off. If the smaller, cheaper gear did try to go low, it would sound terrible. This usually presents as “boomy” or “muddy,” where the lows bully the rest of the song. This also presents as different tones (of say, a bassline) being indistinguishable. Every note sounds the same.
So you’ll also listen for grip.
How tight and accurate is the bass response? Are different bass tones distinguishable?
One of the most impressive and exciting aspects of a great sound—in my opinion—is a bass response that extends really low while still being tight and accurate. It’s awesome.
How to judge treble response
This is where upper vocals, percussion sounds like cymbals, some fine details, and upper harmonics live.
Again you’ll want to ask yourself if the system’s treble extends, in this case high enough, to cover everything that’s on the track.
That’s presence.
If not, a song will sound soft and dull. Vocals might sound fake, sometimes as if the singer were singing into a can. Lyrics might be harder to make out. Snare and cymbal hits might be hard to distinguish.
With presence comes a lot more realism and a greater sense of ambient space. Nuances you may never have heard before jump out. You feel the urge to use words like “clarity” and “detail.”
That upper extension is not without its challenges though. You must also listen for smoothness.
The highest highs can come through as harsh and bright if the system can’t really handle it.
One of the biggest telltales of this is sibilance, which describes shrill “s” sounds on a vocal track. You can also listen to see if the highs are dominating the rest of the sound, or they’re balanced into the mix nicely.
How to judge audio imaging
The stereo effect is one of the most intoxicating parts of listening to hi-fi. When your ears place different sounds around the room, it can really pull you in and take you to another world.
Imaging involves two things, the first being soundstage. This is, as described above, the placement of sounds around the room.
Listen to each instrument in a band; where does it sound like it’s coming from? Are there sounds that seem to come from the far corners of the room in front of you? If you close your eyes, there should be a soundscape wrapping around you. It shouldn’t be audible where the sound is coming from—not at all.
What’s even more incredible than this, is separation. This is where sounds that seem to come from the same location sound like separate objects. For instance, a vocalist who’s playing guitar will seem to be in the same spot…but the guitar and the voice will be noticeably separate and detailed on their own.
Without separation these sounds will sound mashed together, and there will be less nuance to the soundstage in general.
How to judge hi-fi system timbre
Timbre, or “tone quality,” essentially describes that which makes an instrument sound different from another, even when it’s playing the same note. In context of an audio system, I’m using it to describe the overall feel or presentation of a system.
Timbre comes down to a spectrum between what we’ll call “warmth” and “clarity.”
Clarity has qualities of detail, focus, punch, dynamics, contrast. It’s revealing. It reminds us of a dead quiet recording studio. Too much of it leads to words like “bright,” “harsh,” “clinical,” even “boring” and “emotionless.”
Warmth has qualities of richness, smoothness, immersion. It seems to fill the room. It reminds us of a live performance, where the ambience softens the performance in a way that feels natural and visceral. Too much of it leads to words like “dull,” “fuzzy,” and “veiled.”
Photo by BassemSaad saad on Unsplash
It’s important to note that warmth does not necessarily compromise fidelity. A sound can lean very warm but still be revealing and realistic.
In fact, both warmth and clarity are often relative terms. A system can have a general feeling of “warm” or “clear.” Or it can present warmth in one frequency band, and clarity in another, at the same time.
What you’re listening for here isn't something objectively better or worse. Rather, this will depend on your preferences.
It’s interesting to note that the best performing audio systems tend to be less polarised and more “centred”—meaning they tend to have both warmth and clarity at the same time.
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Now, beyond everything I’ve said so far, there are peripheral considerations:
- Wine temperature matters—so do room acoustics.
- The drinking glass matters—do does speaker positioning.
- Settings matter—and a cozy listening room enhances the listening experience.
Take those on board as you explore. And then consider this final point:
The most important question is: “Does this make me feel the way the artist intended?”
It’s worth coming back to this, in order to avoid getting bogged down by discernment. It can be exciting to exercise passion for the things that we do, but it’s also worth asking the fundamental question of whether the thing, in general, does what its intended to do.
In wine the ultimate goal is to deliver an enjoyable drink.
In hi-fi the ultimate goal is to deliver emotion, as intended by the music.
For some, this is all the discernment they need. And fair enough! For those that wish to dig deeper and ponder on finer possibilities, the above method for critical listening might be interesting.
Happy listening!
