Equipment for the reproduction of sound with high fidelity; SYN. high fidelity sound system.
(abbreviation for high-fidelity) Faithful reproduction of sound from a machine that plays recorded music or speech. A typical hi-fi system includes a turntable for playing vinyl records, a cassette tape deck to play magnetic tape recordings, a tuner to pick up radio broadcasts, an amplifier to serve all the equipment, possibly a compact-disc player, and two or more loudspeakers.
Advances in mechanical equipment and electronics, such as digital recording techniques and compact discs, have made it possible to eliminate many distortions in sound-reproduction processes.