Home Sound System Setup | Falcon Security Systems

Building a home system that suits the room

Home audio decisions are dominated by the room far more than by the equipment. The same speakers sound completely different in a tiled living room with glass and in a carpeted room with curtains, and no amount of equipment budget compensates for ignoring that.

A hard, reflective Egyptian living room — marble or ceramic floor, large windows, minimal soft furnishing — will sound bright and echoey. This is the case where in-ceiling speakers distributed around the room outperform a large pair at one end, and where a rug and curtains do more for the sound than an amplifier upgrade.

Speaker placement follows one rule worth more than any other: keep the two front speakers and the main listening position roughly in a triangle, and keep the speakers away from being pushed hard into a corner. Corner placement exaggerates bass unevenly and is the usual cause of a system that sounds boomy in one seat and thin in another.

If the system is for background music through the flat rather than critical listening, ceiling speakers with a small multi-zone amplifier are the better answer, and they disappear visually — which for most households is the deciding factor.