The HiFi Hobbyist Podcast

In this podcast, the second of a miniseries of three, we shall discuss the BBC’s contribution in three specific areas: loudspeaker design, digital audio and nurturing audio engineering talent.  The music that accompanies this podcast once again reflects the BBC's long contribution to classical music.   The BBC retains ownership of most of the Proms concerts, so we feature a public domain recording...

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) was founded on October 18, 1922, as the British Broadcasting Company by a group of wireless manufacturers. It was later established as a public corporation under a Royal Charter on January 1, 1927, which is when it officially became the British Broadcasting Corporation, as it is still known today. Over the years, the BBC has made several significant contr...

Welcome to the second of our anniversary special podcasts in the hi-fi hobbyist series.  Throughout the first year of the hi-fi hobbyist podcasts, we have explored the use of AI technology in a number of different ways. In most cases, the podcasts have alternated in style on a fortnightly cycle.  The first podcast in the cycle is based on human-authored content. AI is used to turn the words into a...

Welcome to the first of two special Hi-Fi hobbyist podcasts that celebrate our first anniversary.   The first sets out to reflect how the global trends and issues discussed in the podcast have impacted my own experiences with Hi-Fi at home, and influenced my buying choices.   Discussions of my own personal experience with Hi-Fi are generally dealt with in the shorter opinion pieces that you will f...

This week's podcast concludes our current series of podcasts about my Hi-Fi Heroes . We have prompted our AI protagonists to debate the relative contributions of our two most recent Hi-Fi Heroes,Roy Gandy of Rega and Ivor Tiefenbrun of Linn.  These two highly influential figures have both led their respective businesses for over fifty years since the early 1970s, and although they have both steppe...

This week's podcast is devoted to out final Hi-Fi hero for now, Roy Gandy.   Roy Gandy founded Rega Research in 1973. It is a prominent British audio manufacturer celebrated for its minimalist engineering philosophy and high-fidelity equipment, which has always combined excellence with good value.  The company has evolved from building the original Planet turntable in 1973 to developing its modern...

This is the third of our series of podcasts about my HiFi Heroes . If Peter Walker and Gilbert Briggs were the founding fathers of the British Hi-Fi Industry, Ivor Tiefenbrun is regarded by some as their heir apparent and by others as their problem child. He has always been a controversial figure inspiring both loyalty and anger through his public pronouncements.  He built his reputation on the Li...

This week’s podcast features a discussion about the impact of Gilbert Briggs on the development of the British Hi-Fi scene between two AI protagonists. They have been prompted to  compare Briggs’s contribution with another of my Hi-Fi heroes, Peter Walker, founder of QUAD, and to consider Briggs's legacy for modern-day Hi-Fi loudspeakers in general and Wharfedale in particular. As Gilbert Briggs w...

This is the second in an occasional series of podcasts devoted to some of my Hi-Fi heroes. This podcast is dedicated to Gilbert Briggs, founder of Wharfedale. These days, Wharfedale is owned by the International Audio Group and like QUAD, many of its products form part of the current fashion for retro products. Gilbert Briggs as well as being a great audio engineer was a big influence in popularis...

Welcome to this week's podcast. The Hi-Fi Hobbyist is on holiday this week, but he will be back next week with another Hi-Fi hero. In the meantime, we have prompted two AI protagonists to revisit the podcast from a few weeks ago where we looked at how far the Chinese hi-fi industry has progressed and asked if it is now innovating and outpacing its Western competition. That podcast has generated si...

This week’s podcast features a debate between AI protagonists about one of my Hi-Fi heroes, Peter Walker, founder of QUAD. Peter Walker is responsible for a range of major innovations in audio equipment design. In this week’s debate, the protagonists consider the relative merits of Walker’s contributions, specifically whether his contributions to electrostatic loudspeakers outweigh the contributio...

This is the first in an occasional series of podcasts devoted to some of my Hi-Fi heroes. This podcast is dedicated to Peter Walker, founder of QUAD. These days, QUAD is owned by the International Audio Group and many of its products form part of the current fashion for retro products. However, during the first fifty years of its life, under the ownership of Peter Walker it was arguably the most i...

This is the second part of the Hi-Fi Hobbyist Podcast on AI and Music. In this part we present the second side of the virtual album “Journeys”. Side 2 is made up of songs based upon real-life journeys undertaken by ancestors of the HiFi Hobbyist, or other people known to him. These journeys were often undertaken willingly in search of new opportunities and generally have positive outcomes. The mus...

This week’s podcast is in two parts. It is a departure from the usual pattern, looking at the use of AI in the generation of music. There are legal and ethical issues, especially in the area of creativity and intellectual property, and we shall return to these at the end of Part 2 of the Podcast.  This podcast is built around Journeys, a music and AI project developed by the Hi-Fi Hobbyist., featu...

In a previous podcast, we looked at Chi-Fi, Chinese-manufactured Hi-Fi, which is gaining increasing recognition in the international Hi-Fi market. In this podcast, we will look in more detail at how this industry has developed from a low-cost manufacturing centre to an innovation and R&D hub, and how Chinese brands are now building products based on their own innovations that can match or outp...

Last week's podcast looked at the issue of room acoustics and room treatment. This week, we hand over the topic to AI protagonists for a debate about whether specialist room treatments are required in a domestic setting, or whether simpler pragmatic adjustments to room decor with the potential addition of digital signal processing can suffice. As always, the purpose of deploying AI is to provide a...

 Recent opinion pieces on the HiFi Hobbyist website have reported on differing views from online commentators on the importance of room acoustics and room treatments. In this podcast, we will look in more detail at the underlying scientific theory and seek our own conclusions on the topic.  Part 1 of the podcast outlines the basic acoustics theory, Part 2 looks at the implications of the Schroder...

This week's podcast is a generated discusison take a deeper look into how the recording quality of live albums improved over the 1970s. The discussion is not limited to the five albums I discussed last week, and the discussion has a more U.S-centric feel which may balance things for those who think my choices last week were too UK-biased. Once again, I have generated accompanying music to show how...

For me, the 1970s were a golden age of the double live album. Of course, these were the days of vinyl, so we’re talking about four sides, giving a total playing time of up to about 90 minutes. Speaking personally, this was how I got to know some of my favourite bands of this era. In this podcast, I will seek to identify my five favourite live albums from the period and discover how they were recor...

This week’s podcast is the last in a cycle of four. Using the same sources as the Hi-Fi Hobbyist did last week, our AI protagonists discuss the significance of the key recordings of Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies.  This week’s music accompanying the podcast are selections from an early recording of Arturo Toscanini conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F...

This week’s podcast is the third of a four-week cycle. This week will review recordings of Beethoven’s nine symphonies from the last one hundred years. This will be followed next week by letting our AI protagonists discuss the most significant recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies.  The podcasts are all accompanied by extracts from the Symphonies. This week’s recordings of the Eroica Symphony are p...

This week's podcast is the second in a cycle of four in which our AI protagonists discuss Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies. Using the same sources as the Hi-Fi Hobbyist did last week, our AI protagonists select and rank their favourite three symphonies, and then go on to justify and debate their choices. Whose choice will resonate with you? The Hi-Fi Hobbyist, or one of our AI protagonists? It is perhaps...

This week’s podcast is the first of a four-week cycle. This week we will review Beethoven’s nine symphonies and choose a top five. This will be followed next week by letting our AI protagonists discuss the symphonies and the Hi-Fi Hobbyists ranking. After that, the following week’s podcast will consider some of the greatest recordings of Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies cycles, both from a musical and aud...

This week’s podcast is a generated debate to decide whether Chi-Fi represents a dream or a nightmare for the Hi-Fi Hobbyist. The AI protagonists use the sources from last week's podcast to create their arguments.  Once again, the music accompanying this podcast consists of tracks of Chinese music by Kazoom, played on traditional Chinese instruments, hosted by Pixabay.com, and used under a Pixabay...

A few weeks ago, the main Hi-Fi Hobbyist looked at the emergence of Chi-Fi. Chi-Fi describes an industry phenomenon where independent Chinese brands deliver high-performance audio equipment at disruptive prices. It marks a shift from OEM manufacturing of Western designs to the emergence of Chinese designed kit offered by Chinese brands and sold on global platforms such as Amazon. This podcast look...