Audio Fidelity
From Zanecorpwiki
Fidelity means being true to the original sound. All the adjectives that audiophiles love to pile on their overpriced toys don't mean anything if the goal is fidelity. All that matters is that the final sound produced is as close to as possible to the intended sound.
This isn't the sound of being there. Records are engineered. The guitar as played on the day is not always the guitar you were meant to hear. No matter how good the recording is, there will always be some distortion in the original process, so even if you had a system that could magically reproduce a recording perfectly, you'd still not achieve perfect fidelity.
The good news is the limits of the human ear and the advances of modern technology mean that you don't have to worry too much about any of this. With entry-level audiophile speakers and a commodity amp/receiver, you're ear is already the deficiency in the system. Any errors introduced by the system are going to be undetectable by your ear. Our auditory system was simply not designed as a fine audio measurement device. I think this is good news. It means that fidelity is affordable--at least compared to the ludicrous claims that audiophile magazines make.
Things like the kind of music you're listening to, and the placement of your speakers usually effect fidelity as much or more than the components themselves. Not to be obtuse, but turning the speakers the wrong way will certainly result in poor quality sound. (Well, with most speakers at least.) Some speakers need to placed a certain distance from the wall, and some rooms are just not good for listening to music and it will never matter how expensive of a system you get.
By the same token, you'll need a good sub-woofer to achieve high fidelity with hip hop. If all you listen to is trumpets, though, you'd be wasting your money.
On the other hand, perfect fidelity is not always what we find most pleasing. In general, a good system will reproduce music across the entire range so that you get the most out of it. Having said that, some people just love a lot of bass, fidelity be damned!
