Robert Harley • The Complete Guide to High-End Audio Audio System Reference Guide
Audiophilia seems to be comprised of two types of people: those for whom the equipment from which their music comes are regarded as black boxes whose inner workings they have no desire to know about, and those who are a little bit more curious—not to mention, probably somewhat technically inclined—and want to know what happens behind their equipment’s gleaming facade. The former will be more inclined to “set it and forget it” (or even have someone else install it), whereas the latter like to fiddle with their gear and maybe even understand a bit of what happens under their gear’s hood (although I count myself squarely in the latter camp, I don’t think either is superior to the other). Of interest to this group of people is Robert Harley’s seminal tome, The Complete Guide to High-End Audio, which was recently revised into its fourth edition. A long-time veteran of the audio industry, Harley has worked as a recording engineer and studio owner, CD mastering engineer, technical writer, and reviewer. He is currently The Absolute Sound magazine’s Editor-in-Chief.
Consisting of more than 500 pages, the book is neatly arranged into 16 chapters which can be logically divided into three parts: introductory material, chapters on various categories of audio components, and miscellaneous reference material (including three appendices, a glossary, and a comprehensive index).
The first three chapters contain the introductory material, covering topics as diverse as the definition of high-end audio, advice on choosing a high-end system (setting and allocating a budget, complete vs. incremental purchases, upgrading a single component, and so on), and guidance on becoming a better listener (including a description of the audiophile’s vocabulary, the pitfalls of becoming a critical listener, and critical listening set up procedures).
The majority of the book consists of ten chapters, each dedicated to a class of audio component. Examples include: preamps; power and integrated amps; speakers; music servers; and (perhaps of most interest to Vinylphile readers) turntables, tonearms, and cartridges. Each of these chapters starts with an introduction, followed by a description of how to choose the type of equipment being discussed and what to listen for. After these more general matters, each chapter then delves into more technical detail. This technical information is optional and probably won’t interest all readers, but I found it a very valuable addition to the text.
Following the main exposition are two chapters about system setup. The first of these chapters talks about room acoustics and the importance of proper speaker placement, and the second discusses expert tuning techniques and audio accessories.
The final chapter before the appendices is about measurements and specifications. This is beneficial material because although most audiophiles value sound quality over theoretical specifications or measured performance, being able to interpret these numbers is a useful skill to have.
The book’s back matter consists of three appendices (about sound and hearing, audio and electronics basics, and digital audio basics), a glossary, and a comprehensive index.
One thing I like about this book is the accessibility and compartmentalisation of the material. With the exception of the introductory material (which everyone should read), one may read as many or as few chapters as desired. Similarly, the logical layout of the material within the chapters makes it easy for the technically disinclined to skip the more technical stuff.
The Complete Guide to High-End Audio is written in an accessible manner (avoiding unnecessary jargon and the like), and numerous illustrations and photographs support the prose. I do have a couple of (admittedly small) criticisms to make. The first is that the book uses ragged right margins; I prefer fully justified paragraphs, but admit this is a personal preference thing, and most people probably don’t care one way or the other. Another thing that is a little more serious (if only because in my opinion it disrupts one’s reading flow) is that some of the end of line hyphenation breaks come across as being awkward. For example, a sentence in the paragraph about half way down page 61 reads “Use dealer recommendations, read reviews in responsi-ble audiophile magazines, and ask friends who have high-end systems.”, where the word “responsible” is broken across two lines (at the point where I hyphenated it in the quote). Not a big deal, but for me it detracts from the readability somewhat (some typographical adjustments that I won’t go into here would help eliminate this).
One last criticism is that one or two printing SNAFUs seem to have crept in, resulting in small amounts of missing text. An example of this appears on page 254, at the end of the first sentence after the heading “Moving-Magnet and Moving-Coil Cartridges”. The sentence should probably read “Cartridges are classified by their principle of operation: moving-magnet or moving-coil.”, but a blank space appears after “moving-magnet or”. Presumably things like this will be fixed in subsequent printings.
On balance, The Complete Guide to High-End Audio is full of information which will be useful to just about any music-loving audiophile. The accessible writing and logical layout of the material make it an easy read, and make it easy to avoid reading the more technical content if that’s what one desires. Also, because most of the chapters are self contained, one needn’t read the whole book from cover to cover (although I did) if one is only interested in a subset of the material. The quality of the writing, the broad scope, and very reasonable price makes recommending The Complete Guide to High-End Audio a no-brainer: a copy of this book belongs on every serious audio enthusiasts’ book shelf!
The Complete Guide to High-End Audio
Robert Harley
Acapella Publishing, 2010
xx + 529 pages, $34.95 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-9786493-1-9
www.hifibooks.com