"The Hi-Fi Bandwagon" sidebar: Some Favorite Bugs' Records
SOME FAVORITE BUGS' RECORDS
Bugs, who go for sound effects more than music on their records, include these among their favorites:
COLUMBIA
Goldmark-Rustic Wedding Symphony
Liszt-Second Piano Concerto
Gottschalk-Cakewalk
Poulenc-Organ Concerto
Saint-Saens-Third Symphony
EMORY COOK
Sounds of Our Times
EMS
Varese-Ionization (Ensemble with 35 percussion instruments including a siren)
LONDON
Falla-Three Cornered Hat
Strauss-Also SprachZarathustra
Rossini-Respighi-La Boutique Fantasque
MERCURY
Gould-Latin-American Symphonette
Mussorgsky-Pictures at an Exhibition
Bartok-Music for Strings, Percussions, Celesta
VICTOR
Verdi-Il Trovatore
WESTMINSTER
Gliere-Red Poppy Ballet
Respighi-Pines of Rome
Haydn-Military Symphony
Prokofiev-Lieut. Kije
Rimsky-Korsakov-Piano Concerto
Schubert-Trout Quintet
"The Hi-Fi Bandwagon" sidebar: How To Buy Hi-Fi
HOW TO BUY HI-FI
The prospect of selecting a series of intricate electrical devices appalls most people. Consequently, hi-fi dealers try to allay their fears by providing rooms in which samples are on display, all connected to an intricate master control panel. By simply turning its switches, the beginner can connect any combination of components (p. 148) and decide what sounds good to him. Once he makes his selection the store wires the components with coded cables or foolproof sockets which enable anyone to plug the system together without chance of error.
Here are a few hints on hi-fi shopping:
Bring some of your own records along. They will help orient you in testing unfamiliar equipment.
Beware of any dealer who tries to tell you what sounds best; you are the only judge of that and can best decide by making several trips to the store, listening carefully each time. You can buy better phonographic reproduction than you probably ever heard before for $150 or less, and $400 to $500 buys a really superb radio-phonograph combination. After that you will likely be paying for an expensive cabinet or the ultimate perfection that is lost on all but the most sophisticated ears.
You will do well to select a jeweled stylus (hi-fi-ese for needle), an amplifier of at least 10-watt output and a maximum of 5% of harmonic distortion. Make sure that it delivers its full tonal response without distortion, even when the set is turned up to window-rattling volume. Purists often insist on heavy, semi-professional turntables instead of changers, on the ground that they spin the records more evenly and perfectly. Most people, however, will not sacrifice the changer's convenience for the microscopic difference made by the turntable.
Hi-fi pricing is somewhat curious. Both a list and a net price are usually mentioned, a practice apparently designed to convince the purchaser that he is buying wholesale. This may be true, depending on one's definition. The list price, which almost no one ever pays, is the full retail price. Thus an item listed at $400 actually sells for $240 net-that is, less a 40% discount of $160. The net price of $240 includes a 50% markup for the dealer, who will have paid the manufacturer $160.
Personal obeservations on the "origins" of the Hi-Fi hobby
As I was reading this article and it's suppositions about the origins of the Hi-Fi hobby I was struck by the similarities to my dad's interest from this era that match with their theories:
1. My dad was a lawyer, one of the members of the early "audiophiles" group they delineated, he never did go in for the gimmic records.
2. The earliest phonograph we had that I recall was the Columbia 360, the "table model phonograph with twin speakers which is the closest low-cost approach to high fidelity now on the market"
3. Later on my dad got audio advice from my uncle, an ex-Army Signal Corp electrical engineer who later worked for IBM. I remember my dad explaining to me how the coil would only allow low tones to be sent to the larger speaker in the cabinet he had built. That same uncle gave me an oscilloscope and a Heathlkit monophonic amp he had built.
By the time stereo was coming into vogue my dad gave up on Hi-Fi as a "hobby". By then he had less time and more money, and the mass produced systems had improved considerably. He still enjoyed the music immensly even though he didn't have as much of his own effort invested in the hobby.