About

What this site is

ExtremeHiFi is a reference for hi-fi equipment: 10,000 products, 870 brands, 1,000 dealers and about 20,000 used listings, with a digest of what reviewers have said about each product and what it sells for second-hand. We built it because the information a buyer needs is scattered across hundreds of review sites, forums, manufacturer pages and classifieds, and nobody had put it in one place. The site is free, we currently sell nothing, and we are not owned by any manufacturer, dealer, nor reviewer.

Who runs it

Julian Shapiro runs ExtremeHiFi. He is a writer who has written free handbooks that over a million people read each year. His interest in hifi began when he saw a thumbnail of the YouTuber Linus crying during a review of $4,500 headphones. Linus had mocked the marketing, then teared up about eleven minutes in. Julian figured the song did most of that work, but he wanted to know whether any speaker could really produce that kind of response.

So he visited local hifi stores and listened. A super expensive system was impressively controlled, like a race car with great brakes, but it left him cold. A less expensive $38,000 pair gave him more bass and immersion and still didn’t move him. Then he heard the Audiovector R6 Arreté, which filled the room with sound he felt he was standing inside of, and he caught himself tapping his feet without noticing. He went on to test dozens of systems between $850 and $250,000 and found that price barely predicts how good the experience is.

That is the reason the site exists. Julian’s view is that the best hifi isn’t just more clarity, bass and scale. It’s a different experience from ordinary speakers. He wrote a free guide on what makes speakers sound great, how to buy them and how to set them up, and ExtremeHiFi is the catalog for people who would rather browse products than read.

Where the product and price data come from

Product specifications, descriptions and release years come from the manufacturers' own sites and spec sheets where possible (which isn't always the case). The price shown as "Price" is the manufacturer's list price in US dollars or as found on online stores; prices in other currencies are converted at the European Central Bank's rate, and the currency switcher at the top of every page converts for display only.

"Avg. Used Price" on a product page is the median of the asking prices we have seen for that product, keeping only prices between a quarter and nine tenths of the list price, and only when there are at least two. It is an asking price, not a sale price, and it will often be a little above what the item finally sold for.

Dealer geographies

The dealer directory covers the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

Independence

We do not currently sell equipment. Dealers and brands cannot buy a listing, a ranking, nor a word of a summary. Product pages link to Amazon through the Amazon Associates program, and we may earn a commission when you buy through such a link.

Corrections

If a price, a listing, a dealer detail or a summary is wrong, please email [email protected] and we will fix it. Dealers and sellers who want an entry corrected or removed can ask the same way.