Chi-Fi : What it is and why we should care

The term Chi-Fi is a portmanteau if “Chinese” (or China) and “Hi-Fi”, which in itself is a portmanteau of high and fidelity. Now, it’s important to remember what fidelity means.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, fidelity is “the degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced”.
So, with reference to audio equipment, the term Hi-Fi refers to a piece of audio hardware (or an entire system) which has a high level of accuracy in taking a signal that is fed to it and, in the case of speakers for example, converting it into soundwaves with as little distortion added as possible.
Hi-Fi should therefor be all about the accuracy of the reproduction of sound, nothing else.

And yet, there are terms such as Budget-Fi, Low-Fi, Mid-Fi, and Summit-Fi which you can find all over various audio sites, blogs, forums, and Facebook groups. All of those terms are portmanteaus which includes Hi-Fi, but none of them are actually with reference to audio fidelity. Instead, they refer entirely to the price-tag attached to the product(s).
This is something that kind of annoys me a little bit because the moment you categorise items like these entirely with reference to affordability, our brains tend to jump to the idea that a lower-priced item will offer less performance too. But, as we’ve just covered, those terms don’t take performance into account at all. This is an assumption that we need to eliminate, not just because it doesn’t actually provide us with any useful information, but because it means that we tend to totally overlook various items which might not cost much but can actually perform really well.

For the last couple of decades, a wide variety of companies and sectors of industry, and in particular some manufacturing, have moved partly or entirely over to the land of China.
Now, we could debate for years on end (as people have) about whether this is as an inevitable result of capitalism, and/or the ethical implications of the socio-economic and political means by which this has been achieved. But that’s a particular hornet’s nest which I don’t feel like sticking my head into.
All we need to know for now is that the term “Chi-Fi” is one which is widely used to refer to relatively low-cost audio products (especially earphones, amplifiers, and DAPs), most of which tend to be produced in China.

Immediately we can see how the term Chi-Fi could be totally misused and misinterpreted because loads of companies, some really large ones, produce their products in China. Apple, for example, manufacture their products in China, and let’s not forget the likes of FiiO and iBasso, both of which actually are full-on Chinese companies. FiiO in particular, at least for the last 2 or 3 years, have been producing some great products that perform well and are usually considerably more affordable than competing products which are produced elsewhere. So technically, FiiO and iBasso (among others) would totally fit under the large umbrella of Chi-Fi.
It’s for this reason that we really shouldn’t just turn our noses up at anything which might be described as being “Chi-Fi”. This is not just because it may very well be a totally incorrect assumption of the product’s performance and value, but perhaps more important than that is that super-affordable Chi-Fi products might actually make up the largest slice of the entire pie of enthusiast audio products.
Truth be told, what reignited my interest in this most recently were the Massdrop HD58X headphones that I had purchased and reviewed. There’s just no doubt about it – they are the best value full-sized headphones that I’ve tried to date.
But that headphone got me thinking; what would be the most affordable way to get this type of sound in a portable package? And that is what led me to look towards the enormous Chi-Fi market.

What do you think it costs to manufacture a finished audio product such as a set of headphones, or perhaps an amplifier or standalone music player?
Honestly, in some cases it could be as low as a quarter or even just a fifth of the retail price. As end-consumers we pay way more than what it costs to manufacture an item simply because the total manufacturing cost is actually really low. There are other costs that go into running a company and into the products themselves such as research and development, insurance, legal fees, marketing, more rigorous quality control, and profit margins for both the manufacturer and the dealers/distributors. Of course, that’s only scratching the surface, but the point is that the end consumer pays for all of it. And that is, in part, why loads of these ultra-affordable Chi-Fi products exist and why they might actually have the largest market-share in terms of total products out there.

If we just look at earbuds for example, there are absolutely tons and tons of them out there and the sheer number of enthusiasts for these items is absolutely staggering.
The vast majority of these earbuds come from really small companies or sometimes even individuals, and most often cost only a few dollars. The reason they are so extremely affordable is because the majority of them are built around the generic MX500 earbud shell design which costs practically nothing and is super easy to obtain even in bulk.
Not every enthusiast can pay $50 or even $100 for a set of in-ear-monitors, let alone ones that cost an eye-watering $1000 and up, and why should they have to if they don’t need to?
Because of the ease and low cost involved in making earbuds the number of different small companies and individuals putting these out into the market has absolutely exploded.
This is fantastic because it means that they are pretty much all competing against each other, and that means that they have a real need to invest their own time into the tuning of the drivers. As a result, some of these super-affordable earbuds can actually sound rather decent, but one of the most common downsides is that a lack of proper quality control can mean that it’s a bit of a gamble whether or not the earbuds will last a long time or even if they will arrive at your doorstep in tip top working order.Perhaps the most famous example of earbuds in recent years is the Monk from Venture Electronics which hit the market by storm. These were considered by many (myself included) as quite possibly the best value audio product you can buy for $5. No, they didn’t have the bass response or refined treble that you might get from in-ear-monitors or full-sized headphones, but I say again, they cost a mere $5.
But, believe it or not, some of these seemingly low-cost earbuds can cost a pretty penny, some even running into a couple of hundred dollars. Yup, you read that right.

Of the earbuds that I’ve tried so far (the Monks included) none of them were up on the level of well-made IEMs, but I honestly feel that it’s just a matter of time before that happens.
However, we’ve now only really considered these relatively generic earbuds. What has followed on from this are a bunch of Chi-Fi in-ear-monitors too, some of which actually look like seriously well-designed products.

If you’ve got a few hours to spare and feel like sifting through some of these products, just search for in ear monitors on AliExpress. What you’ll find are really, and I mean really affordable earphones, some of which look like absolute works of art.

The thing is, many of these items can be of equivalent design, build, and performance of competing products that cost way more. But, finding those gems can be quite a task, because, as we’d expect, most of them aren’t exactly what I’d call great.
To some extent, that’s kind of the fun though, isn’t it? When you find that one product that just exceeds your expectations so much that you just cannot believe how much bang-for-buck value it holds.
It can require a fair amount of time and research on your own part to find them, but nevertheless some of these really affordable Chi-Fi items truly do deserve to get more wide-spread attention.
As such, over the course of the next few weeks Samma3a will be taking a look at some of the most popular models and seeing how they might stack up in terms of performance and value against products from more established companies.
We’ll start off with a few of the affordable earbuds and gradually work our way up to the more exotic in ear monitors. This is something I’ve personally been looking forward to doing for some time now and I hope it’s something you will enjoy discovering too.

See you soon!