I've been an audiophile for 45 years and this £120,000 hi-fi system has me blown away

Living Voice’s R80 pictured in the listening room of Edinburgh audio dealer Loud & Clear.

How much is too much to spend on a hi-fi system? Tricky one that. If you’ve got the means then it’s quite possible to blow a million quid assembling the perfect set-up.

Scratch that. It’s actually possible to spend a seven-figure sum on the loudspeakers alone. Or the amplifier. Or even the cables connecting the whole lot. Yup, the audio world is up there with yachts, watches and jewellery as a discretionary spending category with virtually no upper limit.

So let’s flip the question around. How little do you need to shell out to get an acceptable standard of fidelity? Before answering that teaser, I'm going to make a couple of assumptions. You are likely somebody who enjoys listening to music as an active activity. Having the radio or a favourite playlist on in the background while undertaking the daily chores is just fine but it's an essentially passive affair.

What I'm talking about is something much more immersive: cueing up a favourite record (or hitting play on some digital source), sitting down, kicking off the shoes, dimming the lights and losing oneself in the musical moment.

It's a pastime I've been participating in for the past 40-odd years, ever since receiving a humble stereo record player and twin speakers as a Christmas present aged 13 or so. These days the ears might be past their best but the hi-fi set-up has certainly stepped up a few notches, while the record and CD collection has grown to the extent that it threatens to engulf the living/listening room. Fine by me. Despite its obvious attractions, I'm not ready to entirely surrender to streaming.

The thing is, over these past four decades I've been very fortunate to experience some very fine audio systems, whether during my former life working in the hi-fi retail sector - a 15-year stint that kicked off with the launch of the compact disc and culminated in the emergence of multi-channel cinema sound - or as a latter-day audio enthusiast and sufferer of perennial “upgraditis”.

Among those revelatory experiences are a couple that occurred way back in my formative hi-fi years, around the early 80s, and stick quite clearly in the mind, like these things tend to. The first involved an encounter with an early-design Meridian active speaker system in the far-from-ideal acoustic environment of a hotel bedroom at one of the sorely missed Scottish hi-fi shows held annually in Edinburgh. The choice of music - Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture - was miles from the classic prog rock back catalogue that made up much of my teenage listening (or perhaps, on reflection, it wasn’t that far removed), but I do recall being blown away, almost literally, by how said set-up handled the cannon firing that dominates the iconic orchestral piece’s climax. I hadn't appreciated how a carefully-crafted speaker design could project the music from way behind and way in front of its flat baffle area. Real depth and as good a three dimensional performance as you will ever extract from just two boxes.

Iain Dewar, sales manager at Loud & Clear, who was hosting the listening evening.

Then, on a Cornish family holiday way back when, a visit to a local audio dealer (I couldn't keep away from the places and lounging on the local beach held little appeal) brought me face to face with another iconic British brand, namely Quad, and its legendary, flat-panelled ESL 63 electrostatic design. This time I can't recall what was being played (it sadly wasn’t Genesis) but I do remember closing my eyes and the speakers simply disappearing from the listening room. A truly holographic performance.

There have been a few similarly ear-opening moments over the intervening years but the last one is very vividly etched in the memory as it happened just a couple of weeks ago. Indeed, it provided the inspiration for penning this piece and, potentially, answering that vexed question of ‘just how much do you need to spend to enter audio nirvana?’

The setting was the demonstration room within Loud & Clear’s Leith showroom - other audio dealers are available but L&C is definitely in the top tier - and the main attraction was an evening getting up close and personal with iconic British manufacturer Living Voice’s new R80 speakers.

Summed up, these things absolutely rock. And roll. And do the quieter acoustic stuff. And make jazz almost acceptable. They also look fantastic - traditionally solid and not too overpowering in a smaller listening space. I listened to a track that I have become very familiar with over the past year or so - ex-Floyder Roger Waters’ 2022 Lockdown Sessions version of Comfortably Numb. I’ve heard this divisive reboot of the late 70s’ Pink Floyd classic on a variety of systems now, with varied results, but this time I was rooted to the spot - gobsmacked by just how much detail these relatively compact towers were extracting from a song that builds slowly to a thunderous climax.

Yes, I know it’s a highly subjective thing - one man’s perfect sounding speaker is another man’s poison and all that. But I wasn’t the only one leaving that listening room grinning from ear to sonically-tickled ear.

Now here’s the rub. The numbers. And they are pretty big ones. A pair of R80s will set you back a cool £45,000. Not forgetting the small cost of the partnering equipment feeding sound through to my new favourite speakers that evening. I’ve been informed that the turntable, amplification/network music player and other bits and bobs amounted to a little over £70,000. Let’s factor in some wiring and call it a nice round £120,000 for the lot. But, as I alluded to earlier, it’s perfectly possible to spend ten times that amount on the ultimate hi-fi rig, so in some ways this modest little combo is a positive bargain.

So, there we have it, the price of perfection for the aspiring, and certainly affluent, audiophile would appear to be £120k. Which I’m guessing might be out of reach for most of us with shallow pockets.

I am, therefore, positing a much more modest £2,000 as the minimum you should consider forking out to get a decent level of fidelity - on the basis that amount will bag you a turntable, some sort of amplifier/streamer/network player combination and a pair of speakers, with the sum most likely evenly split between those components. I’m making that assumption on the basis that you’ll want to cover the two most popular formats these days - vinyl records and internet streaming. By all means add a CD player for not much more. The little silver disc may be in its twilight years but they remain cheap and abundant and I’ve previously written a guide to the best players out there.

£2k might still sound like a lot when the average so-called smart speaker costs a fraction, yet many won't bat an eye dropping a similar sum on a top-of-the-range smartphone or one of those big flat-screen tellies.

Given the law of diminishing returns and financial realities, the true sweet spot likely lies somewhere between £2,000 and £120,000. That’s where my hi-fi journey is parked, for now, but I am so, so tempted to take out a second mortgage/rob a bank/sell a non-vital organ to secure a pair of those stunning Living Voices.

Scott Reid is a business journalist at The Scotsman and previously worked in the hi-fi industry from 1982 to 1997