Hobbies: Small-Fi

To purchase, assemble and operate a first-class hi-fi set, a man once had to have the patience of Job, the funds of Croesus and the genius of Edison. In order to find just the right amplifier (power unit), preamplifier (the one with all those knobs), turntable (where the records spin), tuner (hifi for FM radio) and speakers, he had to compare the wares of a large range of component part companies, shell out as much as $1,500, and spend as long as a week hooking all the parts together. The only alternative was a cheap portable phonograph that sounded as tinny with two stereo speakers as it used to with one, or a medium-priced console that was long on looks but short on fidelity. Now, however, great music is coming in more manageable packages.

No Sour Notes. At last week’s annual High Fidelity Music Show at Manhattan’s Trade Show Building, there was a raft of compact all-in-one hi-fi units that cost between $200 and $400 and almost never sound a sour note. With two bookshelf-sized stereo speakers and one compact changer-amplifier unit, the new small-fi’s can fit almost anywhere, be operated by the wife and the kids, and still give Dad the kind of sound that he yearns for.

The trend began three years ago when Boston’s KLH, long a big name in hi-fi speakers, put out a $200 portable unit. It could not reach down to pick up the very lowest notes on the organ, but it did reach a market of music lovers who were willing to forgo a few notes to save hundreds of dollars and considerable bother.

KLH’s sales immediately doubled, and other hi-fi companies began to follow suit. Shure, EMI-Scope, Fisher and others put out “solid-state” (transistorized) portables that looked like luggage when closed, sounded almost like full symphonies when open. Harman-Kardon added an AM-FM radio, managed to cram everything into one chassis to the tune of $399. KLH’s latest model, the Twenty-Plus, converts both the two speakers and the tuner-amplifier-changer unit into small tables by placing them on pedestals, covering them with an assortment of fabrics ($525).

The Big Sound. At first, purists cried that hi-fi manufacturers were defying their own philosophy—that turntables had to be separated from speakers and amplifiers so that the tone arm was not shaken from its groove, that amplifiers had to be placed far away from everything because they generated so much heat, and that speakers had to be behemoths to produce a faithful bass. Recent technological developments have changed all that. Good record changers have so many springs and shock absorbers that they are virtually unaffected by vibration. By using transistors instead of tubes, manufacturers can cram the same amount of equipment into half the space and eliminate the heat problem altogether. Lastly, the music makers have now come up with small speakers that can reproduce the Big Sound.

“In time, the complete units will make the separate-component-part hi-fi obsolete,” claims KLH President Kloss. Perhaps he is overly optimistic, but at least the small-fi has placed great music within earshot of the Great Society.