Priorities For Building A Better System
This page is a basic guide to explore the levels of importance when putting together an audio system, and where the biggest improvements will often be made. The more fundamental the subject, the bigger the change. Even budget systems, put in the right circumstances, can benefit from smaller changes like cables, DACs and sources, but the more that the fundamentals are under control, the more apparent those previously minor change will become.
For everything being discussed below, cost and brand are not given any importance or consideration, as they are not always a guarantee to the quality of a given device or tool, beyond it’s looks or potential brand recognition, as cheaper and DIY options often exist for many such product and categories. A moderately-treated room with decent setup & gear can easily compete with much more expensive or prestigious gear left in a bare room.
Fundamentals First!
The speakers you use, and the room you put them in, will always play the biggest part in determining how your system will sound. Change one and everything else changes with it. An amazing speaker in a bad room can easily kill what should otherwise be an excellent experience, just like a bad speaker in a great room leaves a lot to be desired. But get both of them right, and you’re in for a treat. Let’s dive into the things that make these two fundamental elements so important, and how they lay the groundwork for the rest of your system.
The Speakers:
Speakers are the means by which the electrical impulses from your gear translate the physical movement of the drivers into the acoustic waves that fill your room with music. A great speaker should be as neutral or accurate as possible and able to reproduce music over as wide a range as possible, be that through a single driver, small bookshelf, or massive towers with external subwoofers. Selecting a well-behaved & well-designed speaker will allow you to get the most out of your system. The better the quality of the drivers/crossover/design the better it is able to handle fine details and show you what hides within the recording. Without a speaker, there is no sound.
The right tool for the job?: No speaker is “perfect” for every application. It doesn’t make sense to use a small desktop speaker in a concert hall, just as it doesn’t make sense to cram a 7-foot tall speaker into a small bedroom. Make sure your speakers are appropriate for the space you wish to use them. You can make a bookshelf work in a fairly large room by rolling off the lowest octaves and using a subwoofer, or two, to fill in the bottom end, giving the speaker a lot more headroom to play louder without overdriving the speaker, within reason. But reality is you probably need a larger speaker with higher efficiency, especially as the room gets larger.
Dispersion & directivity Matters: Below 200Hz, most drivers output become omnidirectional and the response will be dominated by the room. As you go up in frequency, the sound coming out of the drivers gradually narrows until the frequencies are shorter than the width of the drivers, where the sound only plays within the surface area directly in front of the driver, known as “beaming”. As drivers get larger, the lower in frequency they will begin to narrow & beam. A 12″ woofer will begin to beam as early as ~700-1000Hz, but if your tweeter can only play down to 2500Hz, then less energy between ~700-2500Hz will be able to interact with your room and will change the sound of your speaker in-room compared to another speaker. If you have a speaker with a 6″ woofer crossing at ~2500Hz to your tweeter, you may be putting out more energy in the 2000-4000Hz range, which in a small, or narrow, room may make the speakers sound bright, as more sound is interacting with the room, but in a “wide” room there may be less of an issue, as the side walls are further away. Ideally you want a speaker with an even dispersion pattern, that rolls off smoothly as you turn the speaker to the left or right.
The Heart of the Speaker: The crossover is what controls the integration of the drivers within a speaker, as well as determining a speakers overall tonal qualities, which can be a big factor in determining the quality of a speaker’s overall design. However, being internal, the crossover is often the first place for manufacturers to cut corners. Cheap parts leave a lot of performance on the table by smearing the signal they receive, especially in the midrange and treble, harming the clarity and soundstage performance in the process. Replacing cheap electrolytic caps and iron core inductors with decent budget polycaps and air-core inductors of the same values will go a long way to improving those factors. Higher-end components can also be used to influence the tone of a speaker, if desired.
Efficiency and Dynamics: Every speaker has a rated efficiency, which is typically the measurement of output at either 1Watt at 1Meter or 2.38V at 1 Meter. Most speakers typically fall into the 85-90dB range. High-efficiency speakers, are often rated anywhere from 95db to 100+ dB at 1W. High-efficiency speakers give you better dynamics, making them ideal options for larger rooms and home theater applications, as they don’t need a lot of power to get them to dance.
Ported or Sealed?: Each has it’s advantages and drawbacks. Ported/Vented designs offer deeper bass extension, but at the cost of higher group delay which can sacrifice clarity in the bass, and if the ports are too small, they can begin to chuff, creating noise that is distracting from the actual sound. Sealed designs sacrifice bass extension for better control over the bass, leading to a tighter, more impactful, mid-bass. They are also less sensitive to placement in the room thanks to their moew limited low-end. Bass extension in a sealed speaker will also depend on the size of the drivers. Smaller drivers are often limited to ~60-70Hz, while a larger 12″ driver may play often down to ~30-40Hz. Sealed speakers also offer a more gradual roll off making them easier to blend with a subwoofer.
Full-range Tower or Stand-mount + Subs?: A “dirty little secret” is that sometimes the best place for the midrange & treble isn’t always the best place for an even bass response, so you may find that a good quality pair of bookshelf speakers with a separate subwoofer, or two, may provide for a much more even bass response than a pair of large towers in one location. If you want to be able to drive the smaller speakers louder, you can high-pass them to roll off the bottom end around 70-80Hz, giving you a lot of additional headroom, leaving the bottom end for your subwoofers. Of course, you can still use a sub with larger tower speakers to better help balance out room issues, and fill in the very bottom end.
Placement is Key: Want a free upgrade to the soundstage performance of your speakers? Pull them out into the room, away from the front and side walls! Pulling speakers out into the room delays reflections from your front/side walls, leading to better separation of the instruments and singers within the soundstage of the music, and providing actual depth to the soundstage.
Three feet or more from the walls is where the magic really begins to occur. Speakers that sound “boomy” near the walls were likely designed to be pulled away from walls, and speakers that sound “thin” when pulled out were likely designed to be placed closer to the wall, but should still be pulled out 1-2 feet from the wall, you can also use a subwoofer to fill in the bottom end when the speaker is pulled out.
The Room:
The room you put the speakers into plays a massive part in how the speakers will sound, and it can easily be argued that most of what you hear is the effect of the room on your speakers, more than the speaker itself. An untreated room, with hard walls/floors, etc. is going to wreak havoc on the sound your system produces. Hard, flat surfaces create issues with standing waves and reverb which will smother any fine details your system is capable of. The size/shape of the room and where you place the speakers & your listening position can also make big differences to the sound of your system. In one place, the speakers may sound boomy, but move them around a bit, and they may sound thin. Same thing often happens when you move your listening position. For more information about finding the best place for your speakers, we recommend using the L.O.T.S. Method. (See first video in the playlist below.) We’ve also included several videos discussing room treatment from both an “Audiophile” and “Studio” perspectives to give you a fuller & more nuanced understanding of how important the room really is.
The First step is treating your room, and absorption is key, and will be the most cost effective means to control the affects your room has on your speakers. In the end, treating the room will bring about far bigger improvements to your system than changing out any other single piece of gear, speakers included.
“Wife Acceptance”: To get this point out of the way, we understand that not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated listening space, so the biggest hurdle to any sort of room treatment is always going to be the living conditions under which your system will be squeezed into. If your wife/partner/family likes a clean & tidy living room, it’s unlikely that playing with speaker positioning or any sort of room treatment are factors that can be considered. Often times your speakers will simply go where they “have to.” Possibly meaning un-even cable lengths, corner placement, speakers right against the wall, etc. Settings that are far from the ideal for system performance. In those cases there’s not much you can do unless you move into a new home with an extra room, or you get the chance to build your own “sound shed.” DSP or room-correction software is probably going to be your only option, but is likely better than nothing at all.
Creating space: Getting speakers away from any walls, furniture and other objects, is the easiest way to improve soundstage performance of any speaker. If you don’t create distance between your speakers and the walls, your soundstage depth will always be limited to the back wall and forward. Pulling your speakers out into the room allows for delay between the generated sound from the speaker and the reflections off the front walls. The more distance you can afford between your speakers and the walls around them, the larger and deeper that soundstage will become. Some speakers are designed specifically to reply on near-wall placement so you may be limited unless you have a subwoofer to fill out the bottom end.
Room Modes: Playing music in any room will create what are called “room modes” where the reflections of the sound within the room creates areas where certain frequencies are either amplified or nullified within your room, creating boomy or hollow bass. Where and the frequency at which those modes occur depends largely on the size and shape of your room. Your listening position should be in an area were as few problems occur as possible. Walls and corners are often the areas with the most& biggest issues. The larger your room is, the lower in frequency they will be, the smaller the room the higher in frequency they will be. There are basic room mode calculators available to estimate which frequencies will likely be most problematic within your room, but most only work with regular & rectangular shaped rooms, with more advanced calculators being able to estimate room modes for more complex room shapes. The Best way to find the best listening spot for your room is to set up a microphone with Room EQ Wizard and move it around your room taking measurements from 20-1000Hz at many different locations to find the area(s) with the least issues.
Absorption First: Bare walls are the biggest enemy to great sound, but don’t think that you can just slap some cheap 1″ thick foam sheets from Amazon on the walls, a paper-thin area rug, along with some basic furniture, and assume it will fix your problems. Sure, it’s “better than nothing” but it’s far from a proper solution. The thicker, larger, and more of those those panels used, the lower frequencies they can absorb, and the more effect they will have controlling the room. 2×4 foot panels filled with fiberglass, rockwool, or even cheap towels will go a long way to getting the ball rolling in controlling the reflections under control.
At minimum, you should use 2″ thick absorption panels as they will be 75% effective down to ~1000Hz. For effective control down through the midrange you will want at least 4 inch thick panels with a 2-3 inch air-gap behind them. Such a thick panel will be 75% effective down to ~200Hz.
You will want to treat the primary reflection points first, followed by the corners, which need to be filled as much as possible, the larger and thicker the better, next will be the primary reflection off the ceiling. The more you absorb, the more you get to hear of the speaker, as the treatment helps to control things like reverb reducing smearing, providing better clarity and precision, letting you hear deeper into the recording and giving you a more realistic soundstage.
Bass Traps: Deep bass is the hardest frequency range to effectively control as the wavelengths at play are often several feet long. A 1-foot thick acoustic panel is only ~75% effective down to ~70Hz if your lucky, and trying to control deep bass can get expensive very quickly, so fine tune your speaker and listening positions first, to get the best response before tackling the low end. They will also be most effective in the corners of the room or areas in the room where bass builds up the most.
Pressure traps, and Helmholtz resonators are another option to controlling bass, but by nature they have to be individually tuned to very narrow frequencies, which makes them very difficult to get right. They are often very large, and need to be placed in very specific locations to really be effective, so they should be written off for 99% of home audio applications.
“Active” bass traps do exist, but they are also very expensive and you still need multiple units to really manage the low end, at that point you’re likely spending enough money to buy a whole other system.
Diffusion is nice, but…: Beyond absorbing the primary reflections and corners with bass traps, diffusion serves to break up the reflections of flat walls by scattering/scrambling the soundwaves, but to truly be effective you need to be several feet away from the them, so they often work best on the front and/or back walls, as well as the side walls just beyond your absorption panels on the side walls. In smaller rooms they are much less effective as they need space for the waves to scatter, you will also need a LOT of them to really be effective, especially in larger rooms. Things like furniture, bookshelves can also act as forms of absorption and/or diffusion, but are far less effective than dedicated treatment. For smaller rooms, hybrid panels that use absorption with a diffusion panel on top can help to strike a balance where diffusion alone doesn’t work nearly as well, and absorption alone may be too much.
Overdoing it?: You’re not looking to make your room a professional-level recording or mastering studio, with tons of treatment spread across every surface of your room. Such a room would be far too “dry”, “sterile” or “dead” for most people. The main goal is treating the primary reflections, the corners, along with the front & rear walls, which will make the biggest difference for most people.
JUST EQ IT! There are things EQ can certainly address, such as peaks from room modes, and too much or too little output at certain frequencies, however, it’s not a magic bullet, and shouldn’t be treated as such. The reality is, there is a lot more that EQ cannot fix than things it can. EQ cannot fix dips caused by room modes, issues with edge diffraction, crossover issues, and other room-related issues, such as reflections, decay times, comb filtering, etc. For best results, keep EQ within the digital domain (before your DAC) and if you can, below 200-300Hz. The less work it has to do, the better it is. It should be your very last step, if used at all.
To further illustrate the importance of “the room” and room treatment and setup, we’ve added several videos down below from a few great channels:
New Record Day and Present Day Production and Acoustics Insider