Home Audio Setup

In the hi-fi heyday of the 1970s and 1980s almost everyone had a stereo system in their living room or recreation room. A stack of components and a pair of rather large speakers were considered to be part of the furniture and often they were the dominant feature of the room. Back then we enjoyed well produced music on vinyl and tape and rarely was the quality of the equipment actively questioned. We used our systems and we enjoyed the music.

Now with so many options for music the living room stereo has faded from popularity and unfortunately it has taken the quality of home audio with it. Today we listen on BlueTooth speakers, mono, and ear buds. Add to this the new ultra thin television sets with their crappy little speakers and you get a general idea of how far this has fallen. Just like most everything else, we have moved on to newer and worse things.

The result is that we now have entire generations of people who really don't have much exposure to High Fidelity reproduction of music. They settle instead for the convenience of portable sound and the isolation of personal devices. Long gone are the days when music filled a home as the family enjoyed their other activities.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Most of the current advice centres around setting up a private room or a very expensive home theatre room. This, of course, isn't always possible -in fact, it's rather rare- as most families already use all their available space. The challenge is, thus, to integrate your sound system into your existing rooms.

The good news is that if you are willing to break a few of the perfectionist rules it is not all that difficult. Once we understand a couple of basic things it becomes relatively easy to set up a surprisingly good system in our living room or recreation room. It's most often a matter of re-arranging and organizing the system into the room as part of the furniture and then some trial and error adjustments to fine tune the setup.

So, lets revisit the 1980s "stereo in the living room" and explore what you need to know in order to do a credible job of integrating a quality sound system into your existing rooms.

Equipment choices Home Top Chapters

One of the benefits of modern technology is that home audio is now more flexible than ever before. You will have choices that didn't even exist 5 years ago, and if you shop wisely you will also still have the old choices as well. It is not uncommon for a modern system to incorporate a Television set, a turntable for vinyl records, a streaming source for online music and movies and a multi-purpose BluRay and CD player for your disks.

One of the best benefits is that, with a smart TV, you can interconnect your video setup with the audio so that you get the full benefit of better audio both for music and movies. There are a number of ways to do this, but far and away the easiest is to use a Smart TV as a hub for your disks and for streaming music and movies, then using the TV's audio outputs, add an amplifier and a pair of proper quality speakers. If you need extra inputs for vinyl, tape or BlueTooth, switch to an integrated amplifier with the appropriate extra features.

A new generation of components based around Class-D Amplifiers are much smaller and even more powerful than systems only a couple of years ago. You can take advantage of this to miniaturize your electronics. As pictured, all the electronics --including a computer, amplifier and storage disk-- fits into a vacant drawer cavity in the stand, with room to spare.

You should note that speakers will be the most variable part of any system. They range from mediocre to thrilling and everywhere in between. In my experience floor standing speakers do the best job, but also cost more. If at all possible you should arrange to preview them before purchase. At least make sure you have a return or exchange window when buying.

The choices you make will depend largely upon what you want from your system. But as always, be sure to shop carefully. Plan ahead, stay with average pricing and always stay within your budget.

About the soundstage Home Top Chapters

If you've been looking around the internet for help setting up a system or studying product reviews, you've undoubtedly run into a lot of talk about "soundstage". This phenomenon is attributed to almost everything except the remote control in reviews and discussion of all kinds of audio gear. But what is it really and where does it come from?

Soundstage refers to the way sounds originate from different places. In a stereo system there are two obvious music sources; your left and right speakers. If you click the buttons below you can hear sound directly from each speaker.

Additionally, if you feed a sound equally into both speakers it will appear to come from a point half way between your speakers. Mixing engineers can further refine this using Panning and other tricks on the mixing console that can locate a sound almost anywhere between the speakers. There are five general zones used for panning of signals: Left, Left-Centre, Centre, Centre-Right, Right.

Done correctly, this will create the audible 3d illusion of a band playing in front of you. With good quality speakers you won't have any real awareness that you are listening to speakers, they seem to acoustically vanish.

The realism of this effect on properly mixed and mastered recordings is amazing the first time you hear it. Everyone ends up smiling. Then, it easily becomes an expectation every time after.

For movies, when the sound is down-mixed to stereo, the soundstage is used to make effects and music appear to come from the sides of the screen. In a properly setup system, the dialogue will appear to come from the person who is speaking on screen, not from your speakers.

The soundstage illusion is burned right into the recording you are listening to. It is not a feature of your electronics and is only moderately affected by your speakers. There are no rules about which sound goes where or which sounds are louder or quieter. The soundstage is -or should be- created for artistic effect, not according to some overused formula. Thus the soundstage can be totally different from one song to another, even on the same album.

The sweet spot Home Top Chapters

Now that we know the soundstage is a Psychoacoustic effect built right into our source recordings, the next step is to create a listening environment that takes full advantage of it.

While listening on speakers, position yourself so you are centred in front of them. Now click the Phantom Centre button and slowly move your head side to side, closer to one of the speakers then the other. You should notice that for a distance the sound in the centre will follow you but then as you get close to a speaker it collapses into the speaker.

This range in the centre is called the Sweet Spot, where the full soundstage in the recording plays out in it's most realistic form.

The sweet spot is generally visualized as a triangle between the two stereo speakers and the listener. As shown at the right, it is important that distance A = B and C = D. The actual distance between the speakers or from the speakers to the listener are less important than maintaining this mirrored side to side relationship. Moving the speakers closer together reduces the width of the sound stage and moving them too far apart will weaken the centre of the soundstage. The best angle between listener and speakers along C and D is between 30 and 40 degrees but that can vary somewhat according to your room.

In general, so long as the geometry of the triangle places the listener equal distance from both speakers and centred between them the soundstage illusion will hold up quite nicely.

Planning a room Home Top Chapters

Now that we know what to expect and have some basic guidelines for creating a proper listening area the challenge is to incorporate that into a real room. Unless we are building a dedicated listening room (which is rare) we also need to create a room that is both inviting and comfortable, a place for the whole family to enjoy.

When doing this part, I generally like to make a 3D model of the room so I can see it from many different angles and try to find the best furniture and speaker placements before spending any money. To this end I use a free software package called Sweet Home 3D that makes this planning task a lot easier.

Here are a few layout suggestions you should follow:

You want to maintain the sweet spot as best you can.
Don't have either the speakers or the listening position in a corner.
Try to keep the system centred along the room, if possible.
Be aware that you may need to move things a bit for fine tuning.

But, beyond these simple guidelines, it's pretty much a matter for some creative room arranging and common sense.

At the right is a rendering of one of my models. This is an apartment living room, using stereo sound. With the couch opposite the speakers it does everything we need in terms of soundstage and the sweet spot. In this case we were also connecting to a television set so it made sense to position the television between the speakers and house the electronics underneath it. Even though designed around the home audio system, the room itself is still a comfortable place for family and guests.

Of course this is just an example. Your room will be different, they all are. The goal is to re-arrange or re-decorate around the audio/visual electronics, with the soundstage and sweet spot in mind and still create a nice room for your family.

Room acoustics Home Top Chapters

If you've been looking around the internet, you've no doubt come across the many room setup drawings with the listening position and speakers moved way out into the room and huge panels of acoustic treatments everywhere. It should be pretty obvious such idealized acoustics just aren't going to happen in a multi-use room. This, however, does not mean you will be stuck with either bad sound or an ugly room. It is most often possible to ignore the rules and get a perfectly good sounding setup after some trial and error adjustments.

The first thing to do, once you establish a floor plan for your listening area is to mark out boundaries to show were things can and cannot be moved. That is, you need to map out how far you can adjust the positions of your speakers and other bits of furniture without destroying the utility of the room.

Once you have the basic stereo setup in place and before spending money on anything else you should spend a few days listening to it on your plan's initial layout. Then once familiar with the sound across a variety of recordings you can make minor adjustments by moving the speakers or adjusting the seating position by a few inches. You can also try rotating your speakers to aim them more or less at your listening position. Often a move of just an inch or two will yield surprising changes in the sound.

Should you decide room treatments are necessary, there is no reason to make the room look like a recording studio. Most room problems come from hard smooth surfaces such as floors, windows, long walls, etc. Carpeting is a big help. Positioning a bookshelf or other furniture to break up a wall reflection can work wonders. Hanging heavy drapes over windows will help. Hanging Canvas Art can reduce echoes. There are even specialty Wallpapers you can put up to reduce reflections and echoes. The overall goal is to soften the room, which will relieve most problems.

Summing up Home Top Chapters

The audiophile's dedicated listening room has always impressed me as a somewhat unattractive and lonely place. Music should be for the whole family and that mandates a room where the family can gather, do their various activities and enjoy the music together.

While this is by no means a complete guide to home audio setup, it should get you pointed in the right direction. Home audio systems are generally forgiving and should give reasonable performance in all but the worst cases. Once you understand the soundstage and sweet spot, it's really not that hard to plan a room for good music and movie sound.