# Do People Still Care About High Fidelity?

When I was in high school, I saved money from my after school job until I had enough to afford every '80s teenager's dream: a hi-fi system. By the end of a summer, I had enough for a complete Pioneer home stereo system: a turntable, dual tape deck, receiver, and even one of those new CD player things, along with two tower speakers that provided the most important requirement of all: bass. I upgraded the system here and there, but for the most part, that was my home stereo from age 17 until I finally parted ways with it in my mid-thirties. It sounded good, and it was loud. I even used it as my P.A. at some of my earliest DJ gigs. There were certainly far better-sounding home stereo systems out there, but mine was well above average. I even took the time to hot-glue faux leopard print to the speakers, and build a custom housing for it, complete with a shaggy exterior. I've included pictures below, as inspo for you budding interior decorators. A hi-fi home stereo was something nearly everyone had back then, and everyone wanted the best-sounding system they could afford, because music was important to people. It still is, or at least I think it is, but I wonder if it is *as* important. The sound quality of music being played certainly isn't important at all. We've gone from music being played on tape, record, or CD, all formats that offer crisp, clean, full-range sound-- and yes, tapes sound better than you remember-- to the norm being low-quality, highly-compressed, digital files. Even the best mp3s sound noticeable worse than any of the legacy formats I listed, and yet, no one cares. Spotify compresses already compressed files for quick streaming, and everyone accepts the sound quality. Even worse, most people play those lo-fi songs on lo-fi equipment, either the tiny speakers built into a laptop or tablet, or via bluetooth to a small, lo-fi speaker, or, the worst option quality-wise of all, through earbuds. Sound quality has truly become utterly unimportant. This makes sense, because in a time when music has been relegated from art to mere "content," why should anyone care how good or bad the music sounds? Do you care? Do you have a hi-fi system? If not, why not? And now, as promised, my former home stereo in all its glory: ![the furry cabinet](https://heavyhits.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Home-Stereo-1.jpg)![left side](https://heavyhits.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Home-Stereo-2.jpg)![right side](https://heavyhits.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Home-Stereo-3.jpg)