How We Talk About HiFi

February 8, 2026

Like many people, I occasionally lose an hour or ten doom-scrolling through social media. It is rarely time well spent, given I often find myself arguing with relative strangers and stranger relatives, but now and then, something cuts through the endless cat videos and political infighting and lodges itself in my mind.

The other day, that came in the form of a long post from a HiFi retailer. It was thoughtful, clearly heartfelt, and born from frustration, I think. It was very well written, too. The core message was that the business is not what it once was for retailers, and that rising prices brands are now charging are making it increasingly difficult to sell HiFi to the broader audience. The implication was that high prices are cutting large numbers of potential buyers out of the market altogether. I got where it was coming from. At least, I thought I did. But the more I sat and thought about it, the more it sent my thoughts drifting back to how I got into HiFi in the first place.

I started this madness more than forty years ago. Back then, there was plenty of equipment I lusted after and absolutely no chance of me affording. That was just the reality of it. If you did not come from money, you saved, and you bought what you could afford, and you lived with it. Back then, even what we would now call entry level kit was not really all that affordable. A Dual turntable, a NAD amplifier, a pair of KEF speakers, or any variation on that theme still required a good degree of commitment. In short, the vast majority of folk my age couldn’t pop into a shop and pick them up on a whim. You lusted, read reviews, visited shops and then worked towards saving for them. That’s what I did, anyway.

As for Linn and Naim, which to my teenage eyes represented the very top of the tree, they might as well have existed in another universe. They were aspirational objects. You read about them in the mags, and you listened when you could. Owning them was not an expectation; it was a dream. And that hierarchy of kit never really felt unfair to me back then; it just felt normal and how it was. There was always gear that was attainable with effort, and there was always gear that was out of reach for most folk, particularly those starting out. That was not a failure of the industry; it was just how luxury works. I guess the analogy would be that very, very few people pass their driving tests and buy a brand new Mercedes, or whatever. They save for something cheap and cheerful.

I think that what we perhaps forget is that HiFi has and always will be a luxury. Even at its most accessible, it has never been essential. It’s something you wanted rather than something you needed. I’ve talked about this before, of course.

Another option for the teenage version of me was second-hand HiFi. And that is exactly the route I took. Second-hand gear was how many of us bridged the gap between lust and reality. It was how we slowly bought and sold as sensibly as we could to get to where we wanted to be. Which is kind of why the idea that today’s newcomers are priced out of HiFi doesn’t sit with me all that well. I’d argue that, if anything, there is now a massive amount of genuinely half-decent kit available at very modest prices. Kit that would have embarrassed far more expensive designs from decades past. I’ve talked about this in the past, too.

None of this means that prices have not risen at the top end; they clearly have. But the existence of expensive HiFi has never prevented people from entering the hobby. It didn’t stop us then, and it does not have to stop anyone now. Somewhere along the line, the idea that everyone should be able to afford everything crept in. That aspiration sort of turned into entitlement. And I think this is true not just in HiFi. Everybody wants everything, and, sadly, that’s just not how the world works.

And that brings me back to the Facebook post that started this.

What struck me most was not the frustration itself, which is perfectly understandable. Retail is hard, margins are tight, business rates are on the rise, and rent is expensive. The high street and retail landscape is changing. Anyone pretending otherwise is not paying enough attention. I visited my hometown recently, and it’s a shadow of its former busy and buzzy self, despite the best efforts of the local council. There are any number of bookies and charity shops, but the high street is certainly on its back foot. Online is huge, and I genuinely don’t envy anyone in any retail business trying to compete with those outlets that don’t have all the aforementioned overheads. I do still believe that bricks and mortar retail for HiFi is the lifeblood and future of the industry. I believe this passionately!

But what struck me more than the reality of the situation retailers find themselves in was the message it sent beyond the intended audience of other retailers and other folk in the industry. A post written for folk in the industry is read by outsiders, too. Music lovers on the fringes of the hobby, and contemplating their first system. To them, the takeaway from the post wasn’t really a discussion of the very many valid points the post brought up – and it did bring up many valid points. What I think the post conveyed was something a lot simpler. The idea that HiFi is expensive and exclusionary.

And that’s not a good look for the wider industry, I don’t think, though I do believe we need to be having a conversation around many of the topics the post brought up. But putting on the hat of a curious outsider, I thought it didn’t reflect very well on the wider industry at all. There’s also something self-defeating about publicly criticising the very products you sell. Brands are not going to lower their prices because they read a Facebook post. All that really happens is that confidence gets eroded and folk become further jaded.

I’m not trying to say that the industry should be immune to criticism, or that hard conversations shouldn’t happen – they absolutely should be taking place – but there is a difference between having those discussions constructively (and perhaps in less public arenas) and broadcasting disillusionment to the world at large.

People are drawn to hobbies that sound fun and thriving. I don’t think they are drawn to hobbies that sound a bit tired of it all. I have always believed it is better to talk an industry up rather than down. Not by pretending everything is perfect, it’s not, but by remembering why it exists in the first place. HiFi is about music and about joy! It’s about entertainment with a healthy dose of nerdiness thrown in for good measure.

When the public narrative becomes one of grievance and negativity at the wider industry, it affects perception. And perception really does matter, especially to those standing at the edge wondering whether to dip their toes in the waters of the audiophile pool. HiFi has always involved compromise, and it has always involved saving, dreaming, choosing, and sometimes accepting that some things will remain out of reach. That has not changed, but what we can change is how we talk about it. Because nobody joins a hobby that sounds like it kind of regrets its own existence. That really isn’t a great look in my book.

If you managed to get this far, do note that the irony of me posting this quite whiny post about another moany post is not lost on me!