Buyers Guides > Audio

Furniture Sound

'Why doesn't it sound like it did in the shop?' It's one of the most common hi-fi concerns, and while running-in - covered in an earlier Sad but true - is one factor, chances are the cause is even simpler.

It's just that your room is different to the dealer's demonstration facilities, so speakers (in particular) are going to sound very different. Once, speakers were designed, tested and tuned in anechoic chambers: literally rooms treated (usually with long irregular foam wedges) to have no echo at all. Great if you wanted a theoretically perfect sound, but hardly relevant to the rooms in which they were likely to be used.

Now a lot more listening takes place, but manufacturers still tend to use rooms that acoustically treated to be as near as possible perfect. At home, our rooms are nothing like this. Your average modern front room will be roughly rectangular, with a relatively low ceiling.

The demands of accommodating a TV, sofas, coffee-tables, maybe a fireplace and all the other domestic clutter will lead to less than ideal speaker placement, while it's likely only one person will be able to sit in the optimum listening position. It's hardly giving the hi-fi an even break, is it?

Now you could go the whole hog and have a dedicated listening room. Ideally this should have a high yet sloping ceiling, non-parallel walls preferably covered in some kind of material that neither reflects nor absorbs sound, and a solid concrete floor covered in the same kind of material.

It should also be big enough so that you can sit well clear of the walls, and if there's a window on one wall there should probably be one on the other. Oh, and it should probably be at the intersection of ley-lines. Sadly only in your dreams, right? It's unlikely that you can achieve such a room, but a few commonsense tips are worth considering:

* A high-backed sofa or chair will soak up bass, as will sitting with your back to thick velvet curtains. It also tends to make treble focus a little vague.

* Sitting hard against a bare wall will also muddle the sound - it's best to have your seat a few feet out.

* A bare room will tend to echo, muddling imaging. Try standing in the room, clapping your hands and listening for the echo. If it's distinct, the room could do with some damping down.

* Rooms can be softened using rugs (on the floor or, in extreme cases, on the wall). This is particularly true in rooms with bare floorboards, where a rug between the speakers and the listening seat will give a much more controlled sound.

* Heavy curtains will also damp down the room, as will well-stocked bookcases and soft furnishings. But beware of over-damping the room - do that and you get an extremely lifeless sound.

* Avoid reflective surfaces between your listening seat and the speakers. A nice glass-topped coffee table is handy for parking the Gold Blend while listening, but will give a nice solid reflection, messing up the soundstaging. If you must have the table there, break up the reflection with an artfully irregular arrangement of books, magazines, ethnic wooden models of ducks, etc.

* Keep speakers clear of corners. Corners work like horns, boosting the bass and messing up the sound.

* For the same reason, try to avoid putting speakers in alcoves, bay windows, huge medieval open fireplaces and the like.

* Above all, strike a balance between sound and domestic harmony. An acoustically perfect listening room might make your system sound fab, but would you want to live there?

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