How to Choose Speakers

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Use these six steps to audition your next speakers

By Roy Johnson, loudspeaker designer, Green Mountain Audio, Inc.

Showrooms are not created equal. You can guess how many of your senses are required to make a purchase decision in the showroom, above. Personal preferences aside, that eye candy needs only to be seen and touched. For choosing speakers, however, you must engage your sense of hearing as a tool for rational decision-making. Once you have learned to trust your ears, use the following six steps to select the best speakers in any showroom.

Learn to listen, first

Not every showroom is conducive to great sound, no matter how elegant it may appear. The worst showrooms are those crowded with products because you will never know what a speaker truly sounds like until you get it home...if you do not give up out of frustration first.

If you have not already done so, follow the process outlined in our article, "Learn to Listen," before shopping for stereo gear. You will learn how to train and trust your ears to focus on the details in recordings, which will help you to make decisions more quickly when shopping for system gear.

Once you trust your ears, use the six steps described below to learn more about showrooms and the process to use once there so you may quickly analyze what you hear from equipment and have a successful showroom experience. Remember to take along some of the CDs listed in the "Learn to Listen" article, some music from the list below, and a few of your favorite discs.

Step 1.

Know how a showroom affects what you hear. Regardless of what music or soundtrack you play, what you will hear will be affected by the showroom's layout and its acoustics. Here are some points to remember regarding the acoustic conditions in a showroom:

a. Large showrooms allow too much low bass to escape. High and suspended ceilings and large windows do, too.

b. An ideal showroom would be similar in size to your room and furnished in similar ways. A small, closed showroom boosts low bass because not enough low bass is allowed to escape.

c. A bare showroom is designed for style, not sound.

d. A crowded showroom produces too many early-arriving echoes in the voice range as reflections from bare (or glass) walls, video screens, windows, racks of electronics, and other speaker cabinets.

e. Your speakers cannot be lined up with other speakers. They need to be at least 3' (1m) from any other speakers and surfaces for you to judge their voice-range performance. Conversely, when moved far into the room, their bass will suffer -- but that is acceptable since you will still be able to hear if voices are clear and natural.

f. While listening to the vocal CDs that you brought to the showroom, spend some time sitting at about the same height and distance as you do at home and then stand up and walk around while listening to the speakers.

g. Any speaker that requires a 'particular' amplifier or one 'exact' listening position in order to sound 'right,' has serious design flaws and should be avoided.

Step 2.

Play some dynamically lively recordings which are not highly compressed for radio broadcast or background music and that do not sound 'too loud' when compared to other recordings at the same volume-knob setting. For testing speakers in the showroom with dynamically lively recordings, the amplifier must deliver more than 50 Watts on the brief peaks. The following CDs need to be played at near-life loudness to be thoroughly enjoyed and felt. This loudness level will not hurt your ears if heard on a pair of great speakers. Each CD has proper tone balance and low distortion.

Hugh Masekela, Hope, tracks 2, 3, 5, and 12.

Rusted Root, When I Woke, tracks 1, 8, and 10.

Dick Hyman, Dick Hyman Plays Duke Ellington, tracks 1 and 3.

Memphis Slim, Traveling with the Blues, tracks 1, 3, and 13.

Step 3.

Play some recordings with a broad range of tones. Recordings with a wide tone range from bass to treble are always challenging. The Hugh Masekela and Rusted Root CDs qualify as challenging and we would add the following discs because they also contain unique mixtures of instruments and voices.

Michael Buble, It's Time, tracks 1, 2, and 8.

Pink Martini, Hang On Little Tomato, tracks 3 and 7.

Forest for the Trees, Forest for the Trees, tracks 1 and 4.

Galactic, Late for the Future, tracks 1, 2, and 3.

Step 4.

Listen to various genres of music. If you are a hip-hop fan, play some acoustic jazz recordings and reggae. If you love classical music, listen to some folk music and jazz. If you are a movie fan, classical recordings and country music offer good contrasts. Hearing different instruments will allow you to identify if certain piano notes 'ring' or some string bass notes 'boom' before taking the speakers home.

Step 5.

Understand speaker specifications, although they do not indicate what you will hear from a speaker because they come from measurements that do not, and cannot, reflect what we hear in a real room. However, understanding the three specifications below will help you compare speakers. Our audio glossary >

a. A speaker's sensitivity (decibels out for power in). Good is a rating of 88dB or higher for 1 Watt of input power. Look for a rating of at least 88dB for 2.83 Volts of input signal. That much voltage creates 1 Watt of power in an 8 Ohm speaker and 2 Watts in a 4 Ohm speaker. However, if two speakers are rated at the same Voltage sensitivity, then leave the volume control alone when you switch speakers. You ears will tell you which one is louder on the dynamics of music, which is not part of the specification. Sensitivities are determined only with steady tones.

b. A speaker's recommended maximum power is only an estimate of how much power it should handle, and thus how loud it should play. Yet, that all depends on the music you like. If some music is bass heavy, that may overload the woofer before you reach the speakers' rated power. Just make sure the amplifier has more than enough power to see what happens when you slowly turn it up. A good speaker will not compress the music (make the music sound flat, like a 'wall of sound'), or hurt your ears even on the trumpet and flute.

c. Compare the speakers' rated '-3dB' bass response. This gives you some idea of how low the speakers go, the lowest frequency each can reproduce before that tone becomes 3dB softer (a just-noticeable drop in loudness). While there are many misleading ways to measure this -3dB frequency, you will hear the difference regardless of what the published numbers say. The Forest for the Trees and the Michael Buble discs above are excellent tests for very low-bass response, power, and 'tightness.'

Step 6.

Understand technology with your ears, not your eyes. Learn to listen for the details, but then allow yourself to feel the entire performance. Do you find your attention still wandering on your favorite songs? Trust what you hear and feel from the speakers, not what you see.

A pretty cabinet is a high price to pay for hearing its sonic reflections smear the sound of massed strings, horns and voices. A very large cabinet for a small woofer may deliver very low bass, but it is always 'boomy' or sloppy on the demanding discs, because that speaker generates its low bass via long-lasting cabinet resonance.

And did we say to...trust your ears!

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