How can i get the best quality out of my speakers?

Question

How can i get the best quality out of my speakers?

Answer 1

Richard L has some good pointers, but the most important factor -- other than proper placement --- is the room itself.

A stereo setup is relatively easy, but surround sound takes some work. As a first step you need to calibrate your setup using either a sound pressure meter and tape measure or the auto calibration setup on your receiver. This allows you to set up speaker distances from the listening point(s), apply equalization to compensate for room effects, and set levels for a surround system.

This all assumes you have placed the speakers correctly (See 1st Link). Subwoofers are particulalry problematic. For some advice on seting up a sub see the 2nd link.

Returning to the room itself, you need to have the right blend of soft/absorbent surfaces (like carpets on the floor, soft furniture, wall hangings, curtains, etc. and eliminate or cover inappropriate refelective surfaces (hard floor in front of speakers, walls in direct line with speakers, coffee tables in front of seating, etc.

The shape of the room impacts on acoustics and you may have to adjust placement of speakers and/or add sound absobent panels or "bass traps" (see 3rd link) to "tame" the room.

The fact is that the room can be a bigger factor in how a sound system performs than the quality of the components. A good room can't make poor speakers great, but it can make great speakers sound poor.

Books have been written on this, so I'm barely touching the surface here. But do some reasearch and there are numerous helfful articles. The last link is a place to start.

Answer 2

An interesting question! Do you have floor standing speakers or bookshelf type speakers? All speakers sound better if they are located away from room boundaries,unless they are designed to be wall mounted. Keep your loudspeakers out of the corners of your listening room. Any corner produces a kind of bass accentuated "horn"sound.Floor standing speakers should have spiked feet to decouple the speaker from the floor.

Small speakers should sit on metal stands with spiked feet and spiked top plate to support the speaker. If the speaker enclosure is very light then a heavy weight on top of the box will improve the sound.Both left and right stereo speakers should be the exact distance(within 0.25ins.) to the center of your listening chair for precise stereo imaging. Also angle them towards the chair center for better treble imaging when you are seated.

I have found that when i remove the speaker covering and place one inch thick pieces of felt around the drivers ,sound defraction from the front is absorbed by the felt and gives a much clearer  sound image. Damping material on all bare walls will improve the acoustics. Wall to wall carpet is a must.Place furniture asymmetrically to reduce standing waves in the listening room.

Sometimes there is an improvement in sound quality by changing the speaker cable you are using to another design. Keep the speaker cables as short as you can. Shorter and thicker cables allow the power amplifier to have a better control of the speakers' low frequency response and therefore provide a tighter bass than with longer or thinner speaker cables.

Finely make sure your power amplifier has more continuous watts than the max. input to your speakers.A lower powered amp. could run out of "steam" sending gross distortion to the speakers and possible permanent damage.More power than the speaker can handel will result in cleaner tighter sound as long as you don't turn the vol. control too high.

Answer 3

i assume you mean sound quality? always have more power than your speakers require,this prevents distortion and heat and will give you the best sound!

Answer 4

Getting good speakers to start with is important. There are several good brands that don't break the bank such as Boston Acoustic, Athena, JBL, Polk, Infinity, DCM, Mirage,  Wharfedale, Jamo. Try adjusting the placement in the room. If there's too much bass, move the speakers out from the side or back wall. Too little and moving them closer to walls will use room reflections to add bass. Lifting floor standing ones up on stands only a few inches high will help if there's too much bass from floor reflections. If bass is shy and the speakers are on stands, going to no stands or shorter stands would help boost bass. Ideally the height of the tweeter, the most directional of the drivers, should be at or just above ear level when you are in the position you'd normally listen in.  Optimal treble usually occurs when your ear is at level with or up to a 5 degree or so down angle from the tweeters. Most of the time the spacing between the main front speakers needs to be about a minimum of 5 to 6 feet for good stereo imaging. Should the stereo effect thin or disappear at some point between the speakers, experiment with turning the speakers inward slightly until stereo is full again. Use good speaker cable, Monster Cable and Radio Shack's Gold line have good stuff that's reasonably priced, and in addition to better sound, you get better durability, too. I use the 'Shack's  14 ga. Flat MegaCable and noticed tighter cleaner and more detailed sound than my old zipcords. Two last hints: First listen to your speakers with and without the grilles on if you can. Removing grilles can make for a brighter sound, while putting them on sometimes controls an otherwise too bright top end. Second give them a few hours playing time to break in the cone suspensions, diaphragms and driver assemblies. Both these phenomena happened recently on my new set of JBL speakers. The treble was bright to start with, a little too much so, but after a week's listening the tweeters broke in nicely and still sound nice and smooth now  8 months later. Once broken in they did seem a little too mellow at times, so I pulled the grilles, a little too bright again. So I took a look at the grilles themselves. In addition to a nice thin cloth layer, there was a supporting lattice of plastic bars criss-crossing behind the cloth spaced only a half inch apart! That had to be diffusing some of the sound, especially treble and vocals. Being bookshelf units, there was no way the frames needed near that much support. I just left the outer perimeter frame and the two bars that crossed near the center of the grille. They crossed between the woofer and tweeter, never in front of either driver so they were fine. BINGO, clear smooth and detailed sound.

Hope this helps

Oh, if you're doing a surround sound setup, the rear speakers should be slightly above the listeners and the front center speaker near the middle and near ear level.