Expert advice
How to choose the right speakers for your room?
Stereo or Surround
The obvious first question is whether you want to listen to music in stereo, or music and also some surround sound, or even immersive audio. If it’s music only, keep things pure. If you mainly listen to music, and sometimes watch a movie, it still makes sense to spend the most budget on the front speakers, because even in the best movies and surround concerts there’s more sound mixed to the front channels than to the ambience channels. But if you’re really into the latest movies and surround sound, all speakers around you should be as equal as possible. This requires a higher budget, but only similar speakers will fully immerse you in sound, without any discernible separation between the individual channels.
Free-standing, on-wall, in-wall
Loudspeakers are often placed standing in the room and become a piece of furniture. Acoustically, this requires spending some time to find the best spots in the room, and keeping the speakers as far away from the walls as possible, since every nearby boundary reflects the soundwaves. These come back delayed, interfering with the original sound and changing it, especially in the bass. The alternative is on-wall speakers, which are tuned for the placement right at the wall. This minimizes the delayed soundwaves, and the punch in the bass, the so-called impulse response, will be much better. On-wall speakers also look great next to the TV flatscreen. If the room construction allows, the most discreet are in-wall speakers – in a home cinema ideally mounted behind an acoustically transparent screen.
Room size, loudspeaker size, and subwoofers
The ultimate loudspeaker size depends on two things: The size of the room, and how close the music or sound effects should resemble a life-like experience. There’s no ideal square meter size nor ideal room dimensions, every room sounds different. The larger the room, the more the loudspeakers must be capable of filling the space with sound. This usually requires bigger speakers incorporating more so-called drivers for the bass, midrange and high frequencies. Small speakers may not achieve the required volume level and bass dynamics alone, but are a discreet and livingroom-friendly solution when the low frequencies are taken over by separate woofers. In modern amplifiers, aligning all speakers can be done by electronic room correction. When the speakers match the room well, they are able to reproduce the scale, power, and dynamics of real-life sound events, from a pure singer-songwriter recording over electronic ambience music to the overwhelming sound effects of a movie.
Improving your room acoustics
Apart from the loudspeakers and where they are placed, it’s important where you sit. For music and surround sound it’s all based around the so-called stereo triangle, with the main listening seat placed in the middle yet roughly the same distance away from the two main speakers. The best listening spot gives the perfect illusion of a soundstage image in front of you, virtually between the speakers. Since the ultimate sound experience depends heavily on room acoustics, there are some room acoustical guidelines, for example avoiding hard, sound-reflective materials such as glass, marble, stone, tiles, concrete. Keep the room shape, interior and furniture around your stereo triangle as symmetrical as possible. Some natural sound absorption is good, for example drapes, carpets, sofas and armchairs with soft fabric. Seems impossible to meet all requirements? Then electronic room correction like RoomPerfectTM is a solution, addressing room-acoustical issues entirely in the digital way, invisible to the listener.
How to improve room acoustics
Lyngdorf amplifiers and processors include RoomPerfect™, an advanced digital signal processing taking care of room acoustical issues. Also, Lyngdorf loudspeakers are designed benefitting from room acoustics rather than working against it. But what can be done to improve room acoustics? Here’s some practical advice for everyone.
RoomPerfect™
Most high-end products are developed in sonically ideal listening rooms with optimized dimensions and acoustic treatments. However, in reality, sound systems are installed in authentic living spaces, not sound labs. Your sound system should be perfect in your environment – and we can promise it will be.
