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HIFI BUYING ADVICE
DIGITALIZATION
More and more of both the music and video chains are going digital. This is important because as they do, the price/performance ratios will begin to change dramatically just like computers.What you buy won't be obsolete in 6 months, there will simply be something better and cheaper available. CD players, DVD players, processors and by mid-2003, amplifiers are in the digital realm so putting a lot of money into these components won't be worthwhile in the long run. If you can afford it, there is no reason not to buy the best now but do so knowing that better and cheaper products are right around the corner.
As the amplifiers go digital, they become vastly smaller and given the DSP advantages of the digital chain, the face of audio may change dramatically. The amps can be in, on or close behind the speakers and connected to the processor with digital cable. Spending large amounts on amplifiers and cables expecting them to remain valid choices for a decade is simply not a realistic expectation in the face of the oncoming digital wave.
The format war between SACD and DVD Audio muddying the waters for the experimenting hobbyist as results from relatively cheap CD/DVD players combined with upsampling DACs really are squeezing very satisfying music out of the venerable 16 bit CD.
Spend what you are comfortable with but don't go overboard and don't buy "futures".
VIDEO
The same holds true for TVs. Improvements here have been dramatic and the prices of top end units have plummeted. This will continue but there may also be a development which will challenge the traditional large box television and change the face of home video.Front projectors have in the past suffered several problems when considered for home theatre systems. The first is cost and the second is performance. That is changing. With products like the Infocus XI at under $1000 delivering good results in real rooms, the future is fairly clear. Very high performance projectors can now be had for $6000, where $20,000 was the price of admission 2 years ago.
When one looks at these small projectors, one has to wonder how much they will really cost to make and deliver once the factories are geared up to make them in quantity. The Infocus uses the new Texas Instruments digital mirror chip (DLP - digital light processing) and there are competing technologies to assure continued falling prices and performance breakthroughs.
Newform Research will be very happy to see the front projectors and pulldown screens (and perhaps plasma displays) displace traditional big box TVs because getting rid of 2 to 3 cubic metres of reflective glass and resonant plastic panels between the speakers can only improve the audio performance of any system. Certainly, this is a view held by every high end loudspeaker manufacturer.
Again, the buying advice is the same. Don't extend yourself for a long term killer system now because it is going to look pretty lame in a couple of years.
YOU CAN'T GO WRONG
HIFI BUYING ADVICE
PICKING THE RIGHT LOUDSPEAKER
ROOM SET-UPS
SYSTEM BUILDING: A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH
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