The industry magazines insist there is more to this Hi-Fi game than simply buying the products they have awarded top honours too and expecting instant results. I certainly found that to be the case after getting big improvements from their recommended mid-level CD and Amp combo simply by changing where my speakers were positioned in the room at home.
After digging a bit deeper I have unearthed 3 core considerations before making your next Hi-Fi purchase to ensure the whole system delivers greater than the sum of its parts.
1. Tonal Characteristics
Whilst good tonal balance is what we’re aiming for, every good Hi-Fi product will to varying degrees impart it’s own sonic characteristics affecting the sound. Certain manufacturers even have reputations for particular desirable (to some) characteristics e.g Cyrus Audio sacrifices easy listening for a highly detailed excitable sound with fast timing. Marantz has been known to add some warmth to the mid frequencies making it ideal for smooth jazz and sultry vocals. So the latter would struggle to keep up with a fast attacking Hip Hop track but the former would do it much more justice.
You have only to read the results of panel tests conducted by eager readers of said magazines where blindfolded participants often have opposing points of view on the same bit of kit to realise sound preference is unique to the individual. What you can conclude, is that a 5* rating doesn’t equal perfection until you’ve auditioned it with your chosen partnering kit.
I had a great experience buying from Sevenoaks in the UK. They have good audition room facilities that will help you hear the different sonic characteristics of your shortlisted products.
Make sure you bring your existing partner kit along to the audition too since your punchy and precise speakers with new warm and rich sounding amp could provoke the top end unfavourably for example. The ideal amp for you might be a 4 star rated product which becomes 5 star in your overall setup.
Even the choice of cables impact on the tone, a dealer should recommend using smooth sounding cables on an overly bright system or something more excitable on a warm and woolly system.
2. Listening Room - Size, Shape and Contents
Have you ever moved into a new place and setup the Hi-Fi before most of your furniture arrived? Well I did once and I actually thought the Hi-Fi had broken during the move because it sounded unbelievably bad! Like it had been punched in the stomach and couldn’t deliver any weight in it’s voice. Then along came the sofa, a chair and the rug…quite possibly the most noticeable upgrade in sound I ever heard! I’m sure there are scientific papers on room sound absorbtion coefficients but the point has already been made, when it comes to sound, everything in the room is interacting with each other. In a domestic sense we simply need to experiment by adding or taking away items in the room and not placing big speakers in a small room etc. Also ensuring the equipment is isolated from resonance with a dedicated Hi-Fi rack which does bring clear sonic benefits vs. stacking them on top of each other which doesn’t allow for heat dissipation. The speaker drive units could be loose and require tightening too.
3. Music Preference
The other main consideration is choosing equipment that has the right tonal characteristics to match our favourite music. Of course a more neutral sound is preferred if your taste varies as wildly as Opera on a Tuesday through to Detroit Techno on a Friday!
Taking some of your best-loved tracks to the audition at your local Hi-Fi dealer is of course the way to go.
Let’s say you are looking for some new floorstanding speakers. You play some favourite urban tracks off CD and discover a whole new world of power, scale, bass weight and depth than with your current stand mounting speakers. Your Hip Hip sounds awesome and you can’t wait to get them home. But then, next disc, you play some equally favourite Jazz tracks only to find these big speakers tend to colour the tone a bit too much. Perhaps I better audition some stand mounting speakers after all. You’ll find less scale and bass weight but a more precise and realistic sound. Your final decision will be a better one if you bring different types of music with you.
Finally here are some Hi-Fi manufacturers that are known to go well together sonically speaking:
