10 big tips to greatly improve your system performance without it costing you 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?

(Bonus Tip)
Have you ever tried Space-tech Lab's product? We offer in home trials on select products.

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 absorben 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.