The HiFi Myth and Professional System Design

Rob Sinden

HiFi has been my hobby for 25 years and my business for almost 20. Over the years I have learned that using good equipment is only a small part of what is required to reproduce sound correctly.

Because sound interacts with its environment, sound reproduction must address both equipment and the acoustics of the room – changing to better equipment will only ever address half the problem.

In the home audio industry, this inconvenient truth is largely ignored because of a number of factors. Firstly, very few people who sell audio equipment have ever had any training in acoustics.

The brands they do sell naturally support the idea that equipment is all that is required to get good sound. These manufacturers do not have the resources or expertise to address this huge and very complex issue – so they ignore it.

Finally, the correct design of systems is ignored simply because it is easier and more profitable to sell bigger and bigger speakers and then try to “tweak” them with unscientific nonsense such as cables and mains filters.

I'm no audio guru, but I have had the opportunity to be taught by real experts in the industry. I hope that what I have written in my recent posts will help you realise some of the issues that must be addressed if you really want to be able to faithfully reproduce music and film.

My business involves selling a range of different products that I have chosen because they all have one thing in common – they try and minimise the negative effects of a room's acoustics.

If you are looking for the best hifi and home cinema you can afford I challenge you to compare the systems I can demonstrate against far, far more expensive alternatives.

The systems I demonstrate measure accurately and as a result play music and film accurately. The systems you have heard, until now, will not.

Here are my suggestions for buying a better system:

Audition More Systems
Listen to more systems. Magazines and forums are great but there is no substitute for listening to several different systems before buying anything. If you don't learn something with this time investment, I'll be amazed.

Trust your Eyes and Ears  
Don't be intimidated by big speakers and racks of electronics. Trust you ears and if possible bring a friend along for a second opinion. Ideally you should also have some well recorded CDs and DVDs that you are really familiar with.

Find a Great Dealer
A good dealer or installer is worth their weight in gold. Speak to a few different people and find someone who is an expert in their field. You may pay a little more than shopping from the net but if the company is truly expert and invested in your system you'll get far better results for the same money.

Be a Good Customer
A good salesman or installer will only put the effort in to designing and optimising the perfect system for you if you invest in them. Reward your dealer by buying from them and if they do a good job, recommend them to your friends.

Have a Reference Point
The easiest ways of spotting the problems with most audio systems is by having something accurate to compare them against. I can guarantee your hifi or home cinema is not accurate, so try a pair of good professional headphones. Sennheiser HD25s are brilliant; at about £170 they're not cheap but are so much better than “hifi headphones”. You'll be amazed at what you hear without your room spoiling the sound and how quickly you educate your ears.

Finally, Learn About Sound, Not HiFi
If you are an audio geek, like me, invest your time in learning about sound rather than equipment. Every few months the next “must have” product is announced, while in reality the performance of speakers and amplifiers etc. change very little from one year to the next.

The biggest problem with most systems is the way they are compromised by the listening/viewing room. Invest time in learning about this critical area and you'll end up with a much better system that costs you far less.

If you found this post helpful you may be interested in some of the other topics I've posted on:
- Why Good Audio Equipment Sounds Bad
- Professional Recommendations for Surround Sound Design
- The Benefits of Room-Friendly Speakers
- Acoustic Room Design
- Why You Need Room Correction

mbell

...and get some soft furnishings to soak up the reflections! A minimalist room might look pretty but it's only one step away from trying to listen to music in a bathroom...

bobbymax

Thanks very much for all that Ron

Have pasted to Word and will digest it later (hopefully get a better understanding )

Member 639844

Good post

LV426

Moved to Hi Fi systems forum....

Rob Sinden

If you are about to buy an audio system, the vast majority of options that you will be shown simply will not reproduce sound accurately in your home.

Regardless of how much money you spend, your room’s acoustics will dramatically increase the level of some sounds, while other are significantly reduced. The result is a sound quality that cannot realistically be called hi fidelity.

Because of this, wherever accurate sound reproduction is required, the acoustics of your room must be addressed just as carefully as the equipment that you use.

The Size of the Problem

As most audio systems do not even try to rectify the sonic errors that rooms create, deviations of 20db from one room to the next are normal. A 20 db variation in your music is huge and will mean that some sounds will be heard more than 4 times louder than others!

A Different Approach

I have recently written 6 blog posts on the AV Forums talking about how to design accurate surround systems. The principals I have raised here for surround reproduction are just as valid for stereo playback.

In these blog posts I have tried to demonstrate that buying a top of the range hifi will not provide you with accurate sound in your home. I have also laid out 3 proven scientific methods for providing accurate sound reproduction. These methods have been taught to me by some of the world’s leading experts in home audio and are based on scientific fact rather than marketing mumbo jumbo.

The hifi industry regards these facts as an inconvenient truth and would rather not mention the fact that even the most expensive hifi systems are so inaccurate in the majority of rooms they are used in.

The Inconvenient Truth

HiFi has been my hobby for 25 years and my business for almost 20. I started out, like most enthusiasts, thinking that if only I could afford those great big speakers and those racks of amplifiers, sitting in front of my dream system would be like sitting in front of live musicians.

Over the years I have travelled around the world visiting many leading manufacturers, hifi shows and retailers. What has been proven to me again and again is that using good equipment simply does not provide accurate sound reproduction.

If you have had the opportunity to hear the top-of-the-range systems from hifi manufacturers you’ll probably feel a little disappointed and certainly not as if you’ve heard sound as it was recorded at the live performance – unless the room in which you heard the system was professionally designed and heavily treated.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

For many people the fact that buying great equipment won’t result in great sound is something of a shock. I hope that what I have written will prompt you to do your own research and start learning about sound and acoustics rather than hifi equipment.  

My business involves me providing clients with complete systems that provide the best possible performance in their homes. To do this I use a range of different products that all have one thing in common – they all try and minimise the negative effects of the listening room’s acoustics.

There are only two stereo systems that I’m aware of that can guarantee accurate sound reproduction. Both of these systems will give in-room results that vary less than 2db from reference rather than the normal 20db.

For me, these systems show the future of sound reproduction because if you buy them you will get accurate sound reproduction in any room - something that cannot be said of any other audio systems.

If you want to know if the scientific process and products I use works, why not start by doing your own investigation into acoustics etc. on the net to see if the points I’ve made are valid. Then come and hear the systems we sell for yourself.

Mr_Sukebe

Whilst I'm certainly not going to disagree about the potential for room acoustics to bugger up the sound completely, shouldn't this plug be in the "buy and sell" forums?

Rob Sinden

Sorry, I dont understand what you mean?

This article is trying to point out how innacurate hifi's are when put into a room - something that many people are unaware of. What's for sale?

scorpion88

I didn't know Al Gore was an Audiophile

Basil Plumley

This is one of the reasons that the best installers in the world don't hang around here for long...try and help and all they get is a wall of cynicism...