Home stereo system setup

To help keep your account secure, please log-in again. You are no longer onsite at your organization. Please log in. For assistance, contact your corporate administrator. Arrow Created with Sketch. Calendar Created with Sketch. Path Created with Sketch.

Shape Created with Sketch. Of course, you may not be building the perfect hi-fi system from scratch. Perhaps you already have one or more elements? The golden rule, as always, is: never buy anything without having heard it first. A good support lets your kit perform optimally.

Turntables in particular are sensitive and respond well to a rigid, low-resonance platform, so steer clear of those wobbly floorboards or uneven bits of carpet. And if you can use a dedicated mains outlet, that would be ideal — and avoid placing mains cables and signal cables too close to each other, as performance can suffer. So there you have it.

While The Sound Organisation encourages you to work with an experienced local partner, your first inclination might be online research. This article is meant to help you weed through the ridiculous amount of dis information available on the Internet. Check back for more detailed posts about individual components, system assembly and optimization.

Traditionally, a sound system is comprised of three basic components: source, amplification, and speakers. These can be broken into more elemental pieces, but if you have some version of these three, you can make sound at home. Amplifiers take the electrical signal produced by the source, and ready it for powering your speakers. Speakers take the electrical energy put out by your source and amplifier and convert it to acoustical energy. Each component has an important role, and one cannot function without the other.

How do you go about choosing these components? First, answer the question how do you listen to music? Have a huge vinyl, CD, or iTunes collection? Do you mostly use the internet for music via Tidal? Each of these formats typically have a component associated with them. Vinyl has the turntable, iTunes or Spotify has a streamer, etc. The quality of component you choose to playback the source material will have an increasing effect on the final sound as it passes through amplifiers and then speakers.

If from your overall system budget you slice out just a little extra for that great turntable and DAC, you will get more satisfaction from what your amp and speakers are capable of doing. Balance it the other way, and your amp and speakers will likely never achieve full potential. Below is a list of common source components and what they do.

Check out brands like Ultimate Ears; speakers like the UE Boom 3 can be paired with each other for true stereo playback, without the need for cables.

Another important consideration when it comes to choosing your source device is whether you want your Hi-Fi system to form part of your smart home. Many source devices — including smartphones and smart TVs — come with voice assistants built in or at least work with them, too.

Lastly, and most importantly, you should consider how you want your new Hi-Fi system to sound, and look out for specific features that will help you achieve this. Based in TechRadar's London offices, she's a popular music graduate who worked in the music industry before finding her calling in journalism.

In her spare time Olivia likes gardening, painting, and hanging with her cat Ethel and golden retriever Dora. North America. Olivia Tambini. See more how-to articles.