A HiFi system is a set of components designed to make music sound as good as possible. HiFi aims for clear, noiseless audio, not just high volume and boosted bass. Music on a HiFi system will sound radically better than music on the headphones that came with your phone, due to many different factors like less signal interference (and thus, less noise), higher frequency response and clarity on the headphones, and a much better listening experience with over-ear headphones.
People who enjoy high-end audio are called “audiophiles,” and the audiophile scene is complicated and can seem hard to get into. Here, we’ll break down what each part in a HiFi setup does, and how it contributes to the overall sound.
Digital Audio Converters (DAC)
The DAC is essentially a really high-end headphone jack. It’s the starting point for all the audio in your system. Because of electrical noise in your computer, audio from the built in headphone jack sounds very noisy. You might not notice this noise on most headphones (as most headphones are noisy anyway), but on HiFi headphones it becomes apparent.
The solution is to isolate that electrical interference with an external DAC. These are built with much higher quality components than the built in DAC in your computer. They’re often are capable of powering higher impedance headphones and supplying phantom power to mics that need it.
Amplifiers
For most speakers, and some headphones, you’ll want an amp to power up your audio before listening to it, as it may be quiet coming straight off the DAC. If you have lower impedance headphones, a USB DAC should power them just fine, but anything requiring 250 Ohm and above means you’ll probably want an amp so that the noise from the the DAC doesn’t ruin things.
The reason amps are necessary is because most DACs are not made to amplify audio beyond a certain point. If you were to turn the DAC up to 10, it would sound incredibly noisy (the bad kind of noise). However, you could turn it to 5, and then set the amp to crank it up 200%, and the audio would still be clear
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