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10 big tips to greatly improve your system performance without cost a
fortune

1. How can I be certain my listening location and speakers are in the
correct position?

2. Does your room have too much mid to high frequency reflections? How to
perform a simple test to find out.

3. Yes, I have too much reflection. Now what?

4. Does your room have too much low frequency reflections? How to perform a
simple test to find out.

5. Yes, I have too much low frequency reflections? Now what?

6. Are you using RCA cables longer than one meter (3 feet)?

7. If you have two sets of speakers, have you ever thought there was a good
way to make them work together?

8. What is the correct height for my speakers?

9. If you have two power amplifiers, what is the correct options to bi-amp?

10. Power conditioners: to be or not to be?

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The following is the answers to the above questions:

1. Check your listening position and speaker position placement, the
following diagram is the best ratio for stereo listening.

    Note that the 1/3 ratio arrangement of each section. This reduces the
standing waves and reflections to a minimum. Optimally, if you can apply
this geometry to your listening room, you will improve your system's sound
quality by at least 25%.  Also be aware that the speakers should be at least
3 ft. from each side of the wall. The ideal setup for speaker placement and
listening is an equilateral triangle.

2. Check your room acoustics.  Clap your hands together, the room should
have no noticeable echo after 0.5 sec.

Any significant echoes longer than 0.5sec will greatly affect the depth and
sound stage reproduction.

3.  If there is an abundance of mid to high frequency reflections in your
listening room, all you need to do is to put some carpet or absorbent
material on each side of the wall as shown in the following illustration.

4. If the bass reproduction from your system is excessive and you hear the
bass bounce off one wall and then another, there is a standing wave problem
in your listening room. This will make your bass sound muddy and shallow,
and inaccurate. Reposition your speakers to allow for the longest
reflection the room allows.

5. There is a low cost way to solve this problem. Of course if you are too
rich, you can pay several hundred dollars to buy sound traps or audiophile
sound absorption for devoces.

Here's one painless way to solve reflections. Get some fruit container boxes
from the supermarket, or something similar which is made with corrugated
paper. The supermarket ones have the advantage that they already have some
round or rectangular holes on every side. Put heat insulation material for
into the box and cover them up with the other box section. Put those stuffed
box into the corner of your listening room. Add one at each time until the
bass performance meets your requirements. Usually 4 to 6 boxes will do the
job very well.

6. If you measure the frequency characteristics of certain RCA cable, you will be
surprised by the result. In one meter of RCA cable, the 100Khz frequency
degrades about 3 to 4 db. This is due to the stray capacitance on the
cable. So if you run an audio signal through a two meter or even three meter
cable, the sound picture and dynamics will be darkened by at least 5%
compared to a shorter cable. This does not apply to true balanced cables.

So whenever possible, try to use a shorter RCA cable, you will recover the
dynamics and air you originally lost.

7. If you have two pairs of speakers and their impedance is both 8 ohms or
above, you can try to connect them "in parallel"  to make them work
together. With proper placement position through trial and error, the sonic
picture and richness will be greatly enhanced. The key point is try to bring
the two speakers together as close as possible in line of sight. They can
be further apart in depth. Even high efficiency speakers can work with low
efficiency ones. You might place them even 10ft apart in depth. But the
dispersion angle is best kept as small as possible in order to maintain the
focus.

8. Don't place bookshelf speakers or speakers shorter than 36" height
directly on the floor. The sound stage will be lowered too much and the high
frequency response will be degraded about 3-6dbs and simultaneously, the low
frequency response will be boosted about 3-6db.

If you are doing something like this already, try to use a speaker stand for
bookshelf speakers or use some hollow brick about a few inches in height to
put on the bottom of a small tower speaker.

Sometimes even a taller floor standing speakers' bass can benefit by adding
some bricks underneath. It can clean-up and tighten-up the bass a little
bit. But just as important, many people neglect to spike their speakers
when possible. This allows the bass driver to achieve optimum reflex and
results.

9. Many people attempt to bi-amp amplifiers, but fail to do this to maximum
benefit. Two key points must be noted when bi-amping. First is the gain of
both amps the same? Second is the phase (or polarity) of both amps the same?
Mixing these can often lead to less than optimum results.

If both amps are of the same model and brand, they gain should be equal. But
if they are not the same model, then you need to attenuate the higher gain
amplifier in order to have a flat normal response. Just add an attenuator
box in front of the higher gain amplifier to lower the input level, then you
can have perfectly matched gain in two different amplifier. Of course
sometime you can make the gain a little bit different in order to achieve
greater 'highs' or 'lows', and that's the flexibility of bi-amping.

 There are four possible connection methods for correct phase. You should
try each amp section individually in order the find the right polarity of
each output. First try to connect the speaker cable in a normal way (+ to +
, - to -), then try the reverse polarity (+ to -, - to +) for both sides.
See which way of connection gives you the most depth in the sound stage. If
it is a singer in the center, the most laid back sound connection is the
right polarity for that amplifier to speaker wirings.

    The polarity test should carry out one amp after another, it will be
easier to hear it accurately. Otherwise it is very hard to tell the right
polarity when both amps are working.

        4 possible wiring for Amp output to speaker input

                        option 1        option 2         option 3        
option 4

Hi Amp           + to +             + to -               + to +            
+ to -

Lo Amp           + to +             + to +              + to -             
+ to - 

10. Many people are convinced that nirvanna lies in power filtering devices.
Yes, it might be true if those filter circuits are 20 times higher than the
power consumption required !! But usually those filter circuit are quite
limited in power handling capability. In that case, the filter circuit will
compress the dynamics and suppress the details. All the air and ambience
will be gone. Try to replace it with a plain power bar without filtering.
You may be surprised to see that is the sound you appreciate most.

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