7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system
(Image credit: Future)

You did everything properly when buying your system. You read product reviews and made a shortlist, visited your local dealer to listen to your options and bought the kit you liked the most. It’s all come home and been connected with care, and yet something isn’t right: your system doesn’t quite sing as you think it should and you start to wonder whether all the effort and expense have been worthwhile. Perhaps you are happy with your system but have arrived at this page intrigued to discover whether you've accidentally overlooked something (and if you haven't, très bien!) Either way, fear not, because what you may not have realised is that there are other influences at work here besides the kit itself. And in your haste to get listening, it's easy to forget to think about all of these 'other bits'.

Picking the right components is a great start, but there are a range of factors that can still affect the quality of the sound you get from them. We've listed some below, alongside solutions, to help you make your system the very best it can be. Some improvements are completely free while others will cost a bit, but in the end your system will sound all the better for the attention...

1. Don't ignore your room

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: HiFi Rose)

It may surprise many people to learn that the room in which you listen to your system is arguably the biggest single influence on the performance of your system. And room acoustics don't just make a small difference to how it sounds, either; they can have a big impact on clarity and tonality. Indeed, every room has a distinct sonic signature, made up of the way sound bounces around it and the resonances that generates. This has to do with the room's size and construction, as well as the way it is furnished. Yes, even that bookshelf in the corner is contributing to it.

See for yourself: walk into any room in your house and start talking out loud – it doesn’t matter if you count, sing or speak, we won’t judge – and you’ll find your voice sounds a little different in each room. Even with your eyes closed you will be able to identify which one it is – and that’s down to its sonic signature.

At low frequencies, your room’s behaviour is characterised by its size and the materials it's built from. While solid brick walls and concrete floors tend to hold onto bass energy, wooden-framed partition walls and suspended floors tend to let it escape – but not before they flex in sympathy, creating unwanted sound in the process.

Small rooms tend to have more issues with uneven low frequencies, particularly if any of their dimensions – length, width or height – are similar. Higher frequency issues are more related to the furniture in the room and how high a proportion of hard reflective surfaces it has.

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: Future)

If your room is sparsely furnished, has wooden or tiled floors and/or a large glass area, there’s a pretty high chance that it will sound bright and aggressive. There could well be strong reverb when you speak, and such effects will make your system sound forward, cluttered and tiring. The prominence of high frequencies could well unbalance the presentation and even make it sound lacking in bass weight and natural warmth.

Alternatively, a heavily furnished room absorbs a lot of the higher frequencies, so it can make your system sound dull and unexciting. The ideal? Striking a balance between these extremes.

If the space is packed with hard surfaces, it’s worth adding some absorbing materials such as rugs or carpets on the floor between the speakers, or shelves filled with books. Heavy curtains are a great option in front of large glass areas, and – good news for cushion fans – things like heavily stuffed sofas also work a treat. By the same logic, reduce the amount of absorption material if your room gives a dull listen.

If you want to get really serious it’s well worth looking at getting into dedicated room treatments, which range from affordable to ‘sell your car’ money.

2. Don't disregard speaker placement

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: Future)

A little more obvious perhaps, but speaker placement can also hugely influence how your system sounds. Every speaker is designed with an optimum position in mind and, while some can be more accommodating, all will sound best when put in their rightful place. This information is usually offered by the owner manual, but there’s no harm in talking to a dealer or even the manufacturer regarding the optimum placement in your room.

The vast majority of the speakers we test are designed to sound best when placed away from any wall. In most cases a 50cm gap is a good place to start but, if it's practical to pull them out further, it’s often beneficial to give them more space.

The closer your speakers get to a wall the more their bass output is emphasised. The effect is much the same for rear and side walls, but a corner placement is the most extreme in this respect. We love bass, but ignore the effect walls can have and you might get the kind of low frequencies that swamp the midrange and sound ponderous.

Putting proximity to walls aside, it’s also worth a) leaving at least two metres between your speakers so that they can render a wide soundstage, and b) ideally a little more than that between the speakers and the listening position to allow the sound from the multiple drive units to integrate seamlessly to play out in front of you.

It’s also worth playing around with how much the speakers point towards the listening position. The majority of speakers we test sound best when aimed so that they cross a little behind the listener’s head, delivering a good compromise between soundstage width and the focus on individual sounds.  

There’s no harm in experimenting, of course. Angling the speakers to aim at the listener or even cross in front of them will progressively tighten the focus and solidify the central imaging, but go too far and you’ll find that the soundstage narrows.

3. And don't forget component placement

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: Future)

The next thing to consider is where you’ve put your system's electronics. If it’s close to the speakers then there’s a strong chance that their performance is being compromised by the vibrations generated by the speakers – especially if we're talking about a record player, which is the most temperamental of hi-fi components. The best thing to do is to get the system as far away from the speakers as possible.

Many people put their set-up in between the two speakers (as above), but while this looks nice and symmetrical and is probably the most practical, it’s invariably not the best place the system can go. Aside from the vibrations (which admittedly isolation supports like those pictured above help reduce), putting something in between the two speakers – be it system electronics, a television or even a chimney as in many British homes – adversely affects the system’s ability to stereo image.

In the What Hi-Fi? test rooms, the electronics have always been placed on a rack or two to one side. If this happens to be near your listening position, this side placement might have another benefit: you can reach over and twist the volume dial without always having to turn to the remote.

4. Don't overlook supports

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: Future)

That leads us nicely on to dedicated system supports, which can help to isolate the system from external vibrations. The difference a good support makes isn’t subtle, particularly if you have your system stacked, as so many people tend to do, so this is one piece of housekeeping that shouldn’t be overlooked. 

Prices for good hi-fi racks can vary from one/two hundred to thousands of pounds depending on how far up the ladder you go. No matter what your budget, the support should be level and low resonance. There are disagreements within the hi-fi community on whether the support should be high or low in mass, and whether it should prioritise absolute rigidity or provide decoupling. There are good examples of every type, so it pays to talk to your dealer about which type works best with the kit you have.

If the not-insignificant cost of some of the commercially available supports is prohibitive, it’s possible to end up with something almost as effective by going down the DIY route, though unless you’re particularly skilled the level of finish may not be so great! Essentially, we'd recommend putting equipment on the most level, most rigid support you can find for your budget. 

5. Don't forget floor spikes

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: PMC)

In one way, it’s a shame that many people still refer to standmounters as 'bookshelf speakers'. We haven’t heard a pair yet that sounds better sharing a shelf with a pile of books than on dedicated speaker stands! Not only that, the vast majority of speakers tend to sound unbalanced when positioned so close to a wall.

There's a great variety of stands available, from column types (that can be filled with sand or similar to add mass) to more lightweight frame types. Which one works best comes down to the speaker design, and the type of support used during its development.

But what is equally important for floorstanders is that you use any floor spikes that are provided, no matter what flooring you have. If it's wooden, you can use the little round discs that will likely have been provided to put the spikes on to avoid scratching the floorboards. If you don’t have any of those, you can always use coins or something similar.

Make sure any spikes used in the stand are tight, and the same applies to the spikes used on the base of floorstanders. If those spikes aren’t properly adjusted so that the speakers don’t rock around on the floor, you’re wasting a good deal of the potential of your system. Basslines will sound soft and less well defined while dynamics will compress. 

Overall, you’ll just have a less precise and notably less entertaining sound. Guess what? Tightening and levelling spikes is free. You’ll be glad you did it.

6. Don't settle for any ol' cables

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: Future)

Some people get very worked up over cables. We don’t. They’re necessary for your system to work, and in our experience good ones make the most of the kit you’ve bought. Remember, they don't make your system sound better, but like many things on this list the best solutions allow it to sound its best. How much do good ones cost? Well, that depends, but as a very rough estimate you should consider spending around 10 to 15 per cent of your system cost on cabling. You can use our audio cable and speaker cable buying guides to make a shortlist before visiting your dealer. 

Happy with your cables? It’s also important to ensure that mains and signal cables are kept as far away from each other as possible. If you have a capable set-up, the degrading effect of having the two physically interact is pretty obvious and comes through in an added coarseness to the presentation, combined with a lack of subtlety.

This might seem like an odd thing to suggest, but try to make sure that all your electronics are plugged into mains sockets that are close to each other. If you’ve got a complex set-up, it’s likely that they are plugged into sockets that are all over the room, or with some on a mains multi-way adaptor while others are plugged straight into a wall. Try to group them together if possible and use a mains/power conditioner if you can. It’s all about making sure that there are no slight potential differences between the electrical Earth that each product sees. We’ve heard this make notable differences in particularly transparent set-ups.

7. Don't let connections tarnish

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

(Image credit: Rega)

All electrical connections use metal-to-metal contact, and that goes from the plug that goes into the mains socket right the way through to the interconnects that link your sources to the amplification. Over time these contact points tend to oxidise and tarnish, affecting the quality of the connection. 

Once or twice a year, it’s well worth undoing all the system cables – including those for the speakers – and remaking (i.e. disconnecting and reconnecting) them three or four times. This in itself cleans the metal surfaces that make the connection, though any visible tarnish should be wiped clean with an appropriate cloth (lint-free) or cotton swab, with cleaning liquid (deoxidizer) that won't remove metal or corrode the connector.

The result? A small but significant improvement to the sound, and most importantly it doesn't cost a penny or take much time. 

MORE:

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Ketan Bharadia
Technical Editor

Ketan Bharadia is the Technical Editor of What Hi-Fi? He's been been reviewing hi-fi, TV and home cinema equipment for over two decades, and over that time has covered thousands of products. Ketan works across the What Hi-Fi? brand including the website and magazine. His background is based in electronic and mechanical engineering.

With contributions from
  • giggsy1977
    What Hi-Fi? said:
    Even the best hi-fi systems need care in set-up to shine. Here are some overlooked factors that can make all the difference to system performance...

    7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system :
    Some good advice on rooms and speaker placement. Less so about hifi racks and speaker cables perhaps (IMO)!
    Reply
  • tones
    Agreed with previous commentator - IMHO the cables bit is complete nonsense. Just avoid actual bell wire, but any decent wire will do, so forget all these exotic materials/oxygen-free copper things. Normal electrical copper is 99.9% pure Cu, so, if you want to use normal lighting flex and save the money for better equipment, go for it. Treat yourself to 25m of this:

    https://www.diy.com/departments/time-orange-2-core-speaker-cable-2-5mm-x-25m/5055268786581_BQ.prd
    and save a bundle.

    I once asked John Borwick (audio editor of Gramophone back in the day) about wire. He replied, memorably, that, in his experience "one good wire is as good as any other, but I would never discourage a person who wants to give his super system a birthday present, if paying over the odds makes him feel better."

    Ditto exotic stands - any decent solid support will do. I've been mucking around with hi-fi for over 50 years, have tried all of these things and have come back to a simple system .
    Reply
  • giggsy1977
    When designing components, what cables do manufacturers use? They will design a component to sound a particular way I assume (it's own signature if you like). So whatever cable they use for testing for example would need to be completely neutral. All this about timing being improved in cable reviews (how that happens I don't know!), should a difference be heard, what is the baseline it is tested against to determine whether the cable is doing a good job of replicating the signal and sound in it's truest form?
    Reply
  • tones
    Speaking of manufacturers, John Dunlavy, CEO of Duntech speakers, used to do a demonstration of cables to customers for his speakers. He'd have his technicians hold up the cables prior to connections, and the customers would hear night-and-day differences when the exotic hi-fi cables were held up. There was only one catch - no cables were changed...

    In another manufacturer demonstration, by Quad, people noticed the thick, orange cable used. It turned out that they didn't have the necessary wire, so they went up the road to a hardware store and bought a length of the cable used to power electric lawnmowers!
    Reply
  • giggsy1977
    What hifi did do some blind tests years ago now with blu-ray players and people saw a difference. Not sure I would have but I wasn't there! I used to subscribe to the mag but when I started reading about hdmi cables making a difference and the like I lost respect for the publication as in my experience I wasn't getting the same outcomes and the science I read didn't back up the findings either. I still look at TV reviews but that's about it. I'd like to see more home cinema stuff (subwoofers for example) but rely on other publications and sites for those.
    Reply
  • tones
    Michael Fremer of Stereophile had a long and acrimonious (on Fremer's side) with myth debunker James Randi on the subject of blind tests, which are, after all, the scientific standard method of evaluation. Fremer held that a blind test put the poor dears under pressure, and they therefore could not make a valid judgement! Fremer never did, by the way, take Randi's one million dollar offer to show that there was a cable difference. Unlike Ivor Tiefenbrunn of Linn, who was sufficiently honest to take a test with analogue and digital sources - and admit that he was wrong.

    As I wrote at the time:

    Try blind tests

    Try blind tests

    See how they run

    See how they run

    If they don’t give the results your wife

    Should hear (tho’ she’s deaf), say the stress, which is rife

    Negates the results, cling to that for dear life

    Deny blind tests
    Reply
  • Horowitz
    What Hi-Fi? said:
    Even the best hi-fi systems need care in set-up to shine. Here are some overlooked factors that can make all the difference to system performance...

    7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system : Read more
    One critical factor so far not mentioned is maintaining the condition of your own ears!! Earwax removal often dramatically enhances mid-range, treble and stereo imaging, especially if you haven't had it done for some years. I have very narrow ear canals and tend to get them syringed at least annually; the perceived improvement in listening pleasure is invariably spectacular!
    Reply
  • giggsy1977
    Down to the individual that! Line has to be drawn somewhere as to what factors are possible to control and what aren't in terms of reviewing! How anyone can tell the difference between similar spec cables or a between a wooden and glass hifi rack is beyond my capacity I think!
    Reply
  • tones
    Horowitz said:
    One critical factor so far not mentioned is maintaining the condition of your own ears!! Earwax removal often dramatically enhances mid-range, treble and stereo imaging, especially if you haven't had it done for some years. I have very narrow ear canals and tend to get them syringed at least annually; the perceived improvement in listening pleasure is invariably spectacular!
    The other hearing factor is, of course, age. Your hearing is at its peak in your early 20s, but starts to deteriorate after that, with an increasing inability to hear high frequencies. As I approach my 76th birthday, hearing tests have confirmed that my hearing is excellent - for my age. But it is not a young person's hearing, and there's no point in deluding myself that it is.

    Ultimately, your system has to please only one person, you, and if others don't like it, tough. If that means exotic cables and expensive stands, why not?
    Reply
  • giggsy1977
    tones said:
    The other hearing factor is, of course, age. Your hearing is at its peak in your early 20s, but starts to deteriorate after that, with an increasing inability to hear high frequencies. As I approach my 76th birthday, hearing tests have confirmed that my hearing is excellent - for my age. But it is not a young person's hearing, and there's no point in deluding myself that it is.

    Ultimately, your system has to please only one person, you, and if others don't like it, tough. If that means exotic cables and expensive stands, why not?
    You're right, it only has to please the buyer! If they wish to spend a lot of money on cables, supports and the like then fair play. Their decision, I just don't like to see people paying more for something than is required without them being able to make an informed decision.
    Reply