From Source to Sound:
How to Listen to Audio on Your Sound System
What should you consider when buying a Hi-Fi sound system? Audio quality is relevant to the discerning audiophile. Extra bass or room correction may be important for the casual listener. Design matters; after all, what looks good thumping out tunes at a dorm party might not look the part in a serene living room. Size is critical, given that limited space is typically what draws a consumer to the mini Hi-Fi sound system market, to begin with. Price is, of course, an issue for most, as well.
Yet, in the end, one priority rises above the rest: the music. It's why you buy a Hi-Fi sound system in the first place. That music has to originate somewhere (the “source” in audio jargon) before it comes out of the speakers. How does it get there, and where does it come from? That's the most fundamental question when planning your stereo purchase. To answer it, you only have to ask yourself: How do I prefer to listen to music?
There were only two options in generations past: via a vinyl record on a turntable or the radio. Today, however, there are various options, each with its strengths, weaknesses and history. However, they can also be broadly categorised into two options: online sources, which require internet connectivity, and offline sources, which don't. Panasonic's SC-PMX802 premium mini Hi-Fi system covers many of today's popular inputs. Let's run through the choices.
Popular Online Audio Sources via Wi-Fi or Ethernet
Streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music are at the forefront of modern music enjoyment. Unimaginable just a few years ago, these mass-market services, collectively, deliver access to nearly every professionally released musical track in major music markets, either via control software built into a Hi-Fi sound system, like Spotify Connect or via an audio stream from an external device, like Apple Music. Steve Jobs famously promised “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Now we have 70 million, for a modest monthly fee — and in some cases, no fee at all. It’s truly a great time to be a music lover.
What’s more, discerning audiophiles have lossless and high-res streaming services available, too, such as Tidal and Deezer*. Lossless audio promises the listener the same quality found on the CD issue of the album at hand, without the data compression that allows music to fit into a small MP3 or AAC file. Friendly towards slow internet speeds and limited mobile data plans, compression often crushes the dynamics and texture of well-recorded music, especially in the treble range. On the other hand, high-res audio takes the sound one step further beyond lossless CD quality, delivering even more precision and nuance, often with the supremely nuanced dynamics and ultra-smoothness of the original recording’s master tapes.
*Subscription required
Internet Radio
Internet radio officially began in 1993. Today, thousands of internet radio stations broadcast from every country. These include the digitised sounds taken directly from the radio airwaves, commercials and all, and for-pay offerings from the likes of Apple Music and Sirius XM, which differ little from streaming services but for the fact that the listener doesn’t control the playlist.
Amateur DJs of diverse musical tastes “webcast” their playlists, typically for free. In terms of the breadth of curated content, the musically adventurous can discover even more via internet radio than via streaming services, though sometimes this comes at the cost of audio quality. (Internet radio is not typically lossless, nor does it always reach even the 312 kbps and 256 kbps of Spotify and Apple’s ordinary paid streaming services, respectively.)
Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) Radio
Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio is a digital radio format popular in Europe and available to over 500 million people in 40 countries worldwide. However, it is incompatible with its U.S. counterpart, HD radio. DAB grew out of research in Switzerland and Germany in the 1980s and was later developed by the European Union.
Using radio spectrum more efficiently than traditional FM and with no analogue interference from other nearby channels, DAB allows more stations at higher bandwidth and better audio quality to be crammed into the same radio spectrum, a boon given our increasingly congested radio waves. Initially, DAB radio was broadcast in MP2 format, but further research led to the adoption of AAC+ in 2006, which contains better error-correction coding and is three times more efficient at data compression than MP2.
Chromecast built-in
Chromecast built-in™ is a platform that lets you stream your favourite music from your phone, tablet or laptop right to your speakers. Easily control your speakers with apps you already know and love from your iPhone, iPad, Android™ phone or tablet, Mac or Windows laptop, or Chromebook. You can also say “Hey Google” to cast content from hundreds of apps with compatible Google Assistant-enabled speakers.
Apple AirPlay
AirPlay is a streaming protocol developed by Apple to send video signals, or pure audio, via Wi-Fi from an Apple product such as a Mac or an iPhone, to an AirPlay-certified receiver such as an Apple TV device connected to a TV, a network player connected to a Hi-Fi sound system, or a wireless speaker. With the advent of AirPlay 2 in 2017, an Apple product can stream to multiple speakers simultaneously. Critically, AirPlay broadcasts the media playing right on the Apple device, with the device acting as a live-streaming hub. That means there is no need for a separate remote control or app.
Popular Offline Audio Sources
CD and SACD
Billed as “perfect sound forever” upon its debut in 1979, the compact disc’s clear, no-grain sound, easy track-skipping functionality and durability shocked audio consumers. Though vinyl-loving audiophiles continued to swear by their higher-maintenance, grainier yet smoother and more organic sound, and though CDs had no portable equivalent quite as convenient as MP3 players, they quickly overtook both vinyl records and cassette tapes as the music format standard of the 1990s and early 2000s. That means most people still retain large CD libraries.
Over time, as CD player manufacturers worked to overcome the CD’s shortfalls, a new sort of CD emerged in 1999: Super Audio CD (or SACD for short). SACDs, and the Direct Stream Digital format that underpins them, is broadly considered the gold standard in digital audio reproduction today. SACDs never quite reached the mainstream, with a library of available albums confined mostly to high-brow classical and jazz music, but connoisseurs swear by the analog-like sound of an SACD, and SACD players are backwardly compatible with ordinary CDs.
USB Sticks and Data Discs
The proliferation of CD rippers and ripping software in the late ’90s meant music lovers could take their music off of their bulky audio CDs, and store it on their computers. This also allowed music to be transported much more efficiently on data CDs packed with music files. iTunes and other music library management and digital download websites helped give rise to this trend, and cheaper flash memory saw USB sticks replace data discs as the most convenient mode of transportation. Today, tens of thousands of songs can fit on an average flash drive. As a result, modern stereo systems often have a USB input, and a means on the remote, front panel, or app to search and play tracks from USB memory. Many also have a CD player that reads files from a disc.
Those files come in a variety of formats, which differ in size and fidelity: Microsoft’s WAV and Apple’s AIFF are essentially a direct transposition from CD media; open-source FLAC and Apple’s ALAC are more efficient yet still lossless file types that preserve every bit of detail from the original recording; and MP3 and AAC are much smaller compressed file formats that sacrifice (mostly) inaudible detail for the sake of efficiency.
Bluetooth® Technology
Bluetooth stands out in this list as a nominally offline means of sending music to speakers. Though it operates wirelessly, the signal is generated by the source itself (like Apple AirPlay) and the connection is between the source and the stereo system only. Unlike AirPlay, internet isn’t required, which makes it ideal for sharing music easily while on the go, since every modern smartphone has this capability. Care should be taken about the compression format (codec) supported by the sending and receiving device, however; codecs have to match, and while modern codecs such as Apt-X HD and LDAC have audio quality very close to that of a CD, lesser codecs will audibly decrease audio quality.
FM Radio
FM radio, the analog precursor to DAB radio described above, is still a force for millions and millions of people. While home listening has largely split into online media and physical media categories, FM radio remains a default for daily commuters everywhere. Audio quality is relatively poor, and interference can be an issue, but if your favourite radio station is technologically old-fashioned, then FM radio might be the only way to tune in.
Vinyl Records
Vinyl records have existed in their current format since 1948 and have a history stretching back much further. Despite all the technology at our fingertips, many audio enthusiasts have continued to cling to this all-analogue format for the unadulterated musical waveform it transmits from the groove of the record, through a mini Hi-Fi sound system and out your speakers. And for a good reason: vinyl is undeniably smooth, warm, and easy to listen to, albeit with (and perhaps because of) lower dynamic range, more background noise, and arguably less musical detail than its digital counterparts.
The vinyl format also carries a non-musical advantage that no other source can match: the large sleeve for storing records makes for a big, beautiful canvas showing off album art, musicians’ photos, lyrics, and liner notes. Many music lovers also revel in the tactile process of holding a physical copy of the music in their hands, setting it on the turntable and carefully positioning the needle-carrying tonearm.
Drawbacks of vinyl include the wear imposed upon the record simply by playing it, the maintenance and care required by both the record and the turntable, and the space taken up by an extensive collection of records. Despite all of this, fashionable young people have taken to the format of late. While music streaming may anticipate the death knell of the CD, record sales have undergone a revival in the 21st century and continue strong.
Television
Finally, lovers of film, sport, and prestige television increasingly connect their TVs to their Hi-Fi sound systems, whether for theatre-like surround sound or simply an enhanced two-channel experience. Physics dictates that thin speakers inside a thin TV are difficult to reproduce lifelike sound and preserve all the detail and spatial cues of a modern audio mix, so the scope for improvement is vast.
TVs can be connected in several ways. A popular method for soundbars or surround sound systems is connection via HDMI cable to pass video and audio together. Optical/TOSLINK cables are a more straightforward means of offering equally high fidelity.
Another path is the tried-and-trusted 3.5 mm analogue stereo jack, often labelled AUX IN on mini Hi-Fi sound systems, which offers the flexibility to accept any audio signal fed in that format. TVs typically have a 3.5 mm headphone output, which works perfectly here when connected with an appropriate cable.
For instance, the AUX-In Auto Play function often found in the Panasonic audio lineup can be leveraged to automatically turn on the mini Hi-Fi sound system when the TV sends a signal. The richer sound dramatically enhances the television watching experience without adding complexity.
Many Audio Sources, One Playback Solution
The myriad audio sources available ensure that everybody can listen to their music, on their terms, as conveniently as they prefer. Those options, however, ordinarily make connectivity a bespoke and troublesome process. Many wireless speakers support only Bluetooth, but not AirPlay, and you may have an iPhone without high-quality Bluetooth codecs. A sound system with built-in AirPlay offers lossless compression thanks to its use of Wi-Fi networks rather than Bluetooth. Oppositely, some sound systems may have flexible digital playback options but won’t connect to physical media players. And a traditional stereo system won’t connect to the internet without an expensive network streamer and DAC (digital-to-analogue converter).
Panasonic’s sound system lineup is designed to address these problems. And from Wi-Fi streaming to analogue sources to auto-on television functionality, the consummately flexible top-of-the-line SC-PMX802 premium mini Hi-Fi sound system accommodates many significant types of audio sources itself. Whatever physical media, file format, or streaming service listed above, the SC-PMX802 will play it — and play it in audiophile quality. Happy listening.
Panasonic Sound System Comparison 2021
*1 Weight and dimensions are approximate.
*2 Only a USB flash drive. Playback is not possible from a portable device (Apple, Android™, etc.) using a USB extension cable.
Google, Android, Chromebook and Chromecast built-in are trademarks of Google LLC.
Apple, Apple Music, Apple TV, Airplay, iPad, iPod, Mac, iPhone and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
The Bluetooth® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Panasonic Corporation is under license. Other trademarks and trade names are those of their respective owners.
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