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 Now you’ve bought the components for your first hi-fi system. There are a few things you ought to think about if you’re keen to get your money’s worth from all that shiny new tackle.
Let’s start with the loudspeakers. Just as you wouldn’t put a TV where you couldn’t see the screen, it would be crazy to place your speakers so that your ears didn’t have an uninterrupted ‘view’ of the sound they’re producing. For the best stereo ‘picture’ the speakers should be in front of you (doh!) and equally spaced either side of a line drawn from where you sit to a point straight ahead of you. (Which is probably where your TV is right now.) A good starting point in a typical room would be to place the speakers around seven feet apart and to sit around nine or ten feet back from them. No rules in hi-fi are unbreakable, though, so if the system sounds best with the speakers further apart or a little closer to each other then that’s fine.
Some speakers like their backs to be close to the wall, while others prefer a little breathing space behind them. Again, try both positions to see where they produce the best sound with the cleanest bass. If the bass sounds fat, muddled and boomy, move the speakers away from the wall. If it sounds thin and weak, move them closer to the wall. As for how far off the ground they should be, floorstanding models make life simple as they position themselves at the right height automatically.
If you’ve chosen smaller ‘bookshelf’ speakers, your best bet is to place them on dedicated loudspeaker stands. As well as positioning the speakers at the correct height these will also hold them still: you don’t want them rocking and rolling along with the music as that degrades the sound - they’ll sound ‘soft’ and lose detail if they can move. And don’t worry about the spikes on loudspeaker stands: they’re vital for top performance and they won’t ruin your carpet because they penetrate between the fibres to anchor the speaker to the floor below - unless, of course, you have a really cheap, nasty carpet! If you have a wooden floor that you don’t want scratching, try placing a coin beneath the spikes. |
