The Ultimate Audiophile Guide Part II. Review on Choosing a Sound System

I wrote a small primer for looking at Receivers in part 1 (Never called that till part 2 comes out!!). There would be a fair number of people who are looking beyond the mass market Midi systems and have the patience and the resources to build a real sound system. This is essentially targeted to help those people.

I apologize for having left out remote controls when talking about receivers, however considering I had to cover decoding in three lines, remotes were secondary. Most Receiver remotes should be able to run all the equipment in your HT - The TV, the DVD player and the Receiver. These remotes can be preprogrammed, where you feed the manufacturers code in the remote for your other equipment or even better Learning remotes that can be “tuned” to run all equipment. These can be back-lit (great for watching movies in the dark) or even have LCD displays on them maintaining a two way communication between the equipment and the remote. Pretty useful for operating multiple sets of equipment - With these you will not end up changing channels on your TV when you actually wanted to change tracks on your CD player. To each their own based on budgets I say. It’s the final sound that matters not the razzmatazz.

Another important facet I did not mention for receivers was THD – Total Harmonic Distortion. This is not standard as different vendors have different ways of measuring this. Broadly speaking if it is under 1% you should be fine. Anything over is simply unacceptable. You can use this as a comparison for Receivers from the same manufacturer but not across manufacturers. However the 1% threshold holds true for all vendors.

Speakers

Speakers are the most important component of any sound system. They can introduce more distortion in sound output than any other piece of equipment. It is speakers that make the essence of my gripe against Midi Systems. At the price you pay the quality of speakers that you can get has to be compromised.

These are typically speakers with spring clip connectors for the cables (a complete no no for any speaker worth it’s while. Spring clips are a dead giveaway for a low quality speaker. (These connectors are the ones where you press a clip an insert a wire)

Any quality speaker will have binding posts that are gold plated with support for Banana Plugs. Very simple way to check.

Speakers are an individual thing. What may sound fabulous to me might be crap for you or vice versa. Rule no 1 – Buy a speaker that sounds good to you in an audition. Listen to the same favourite CD on all speakers that you audition, work out a rating system and buy.

Typically in a HT environment you will need two mains, a center, your (2 or 3 depending on 5.1 or 6.1) rears and a subwoofer. I will discuss the individual characteristics of these later.

There are a host of indicators that you need to bear in mind – I’ll cover some of the important ones.

1. Sensitivity

Sensitivity of a speaker is a very critical to the volume that it can achieve. Volume contrary to popular belief is not a function of wattage of the receiver alone. Wattage is important – yes, but sensitivity is more important. This is measured in “db 1w 1 m” (decibel level with 1 watt of input at a distance of 1 meter) Good speakers usually start at 86db -- A difference of 3 db sensitivity on a speaker DOUBLES the Volume of a sound system. Sensitivity as mentioned is critical to volume however not to quality of sound.

1. Connectors

As mentioned earlier Spring clips are to be avoided. Gold plated binding posts are the way to go. There is an important concept of Bi-wiring speakers. Biwirable speakers accept 4 inputs 1+ and 1- for low frequency sounds and the same for high frequency sounds. These speakers maintain a better soundstage even when the frequency response becomes demanding on the speakers due to channel separation. These can also be “Bi amped” (look it up!!). I found a very noticable improvement in my soundstage when I bi-wired my speakers.

1. Frequency response.

Human ears can hear 20Hz – 20000Khz. 20Hz is as low as the base can get while 20,000 Khz is extreme treble. Most decent speakers will cover 20,000 Khz and even go well beyond to take advantage of new recording techniques - but don’t reach all the way down. Hence for real base you need to add a subwoofer. Generically speaking the lower a speaker can go in its FR the better base it will deliver (Be warned this doesn’t always hold true – I auditioned a speaker once that went down to 36 Hz but the base was pathetic)

1. Speaker drivers

Size does matter. Material does matter. Assembly does matter. For example Kevlar drivers and cones sound the best to me once they have opened out due to the ability to start and stop vibrating in an instant. Some don’t like kevlar and prefer Polypropethane cones (spelling?). I like Titanium dome tweeters for the highs. Others prefer the sweeter highs from a silk dome tweeter. This is very subjective. Tip – 90% of people I know love Kevlar, so don’t go buying speakers without hearing a Kevlar driver. Paper drivers are used by a lot of manufacturers still. Make sure if you are buying speakers with paper drivers they are a lot cheaper than anything else. Translated that means Bose is crap – the Microsoft of the audio world.

1. Impedance

Measured in Ohms. This is an average figure to measure the resistance put forth by a speaker. Can go much lower at some frequencies, which can damage the amplifier. The range will be smaller for higher quality speakers so these will not damage your amp. 6 Ohm and 8 Ohm speakers are both fine. Just make sure they match the ratings on your amp. The lower the impedance the more powerful your amp needs to be to drive the speakers.

Enough jargon for now. There are quite a few other specs but covering these should seeyou though safely. Just remember what I said earlier that the specs don’t matter if the speaker doesn’t sound good to you. You just need to bear them in mind to make more informed choices.

I will do part three in a few days talking about sub-sat systems, towers, bookshelves, bipolars etc.

I will also give you an idea of what brands you can look at and what to stay away from. Lots more to go in speaker selection… stay tuned.