STEREO Magazine Issue 21
Editor's Lead In
Give Your Sound A Chance
Editorial By Matthias Böden

  It is an often-heard truism: every hi-fi system only sounds as good as the listening room allows. Nevertheless many music lovers do not follow this insight and therefore give away sound quality. Anyone who has ever moved with his hi-fi system, knows the effect: in the new premises, the familiar system sounds completely different – if you're lucky better. Often enough, however, the listener is irritated by the new, unfamiliar and unfortunately oftentimes worse sound.

The good news: it is not that difficult to recognize and avoid fundamental errors in room acoustics. Sometimes it is enough to place a thick carpet between the speakers and the listening position to reduce discoloration and annoying reverberation due to reflections. Curtains in front of reflective windows can also have an surprising impact, while a bookshelf might be a great diffuser that can't even be recognized as such.

In this edition of STEREO Magazine we are dealing with fundamental issues of room acoustics. We examine the complex phenomenon with measurement technology and give advice on how to improve and optimize the acoustic environment of your hi-fi system. By the way, this starts already with the correct positioning of the loudspeakers, which is known to interact heavily with the room acoustics. If you make an effort, you can get a lot of improvement in sound quality, even without spending any money at all.

I wish you a room acoustics that brings out the best in your hi-fi system. If this is not the case already, I wish you the best of luck in improving it.

Matthias Böde, Editor STEREO Magazine

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