HOW TO CHOOSE MUSIC LOUDSPEAKER

Speakers determine the overall sound quality of your system, so it's worth the time to listen to several models before making a decision. The most important factors in choosing a speaker are personal preference, speaker type and the stereo components you will use to power your speakers.

1. Sound Quality is a Personal Decision:

Sound quality is a very personal judgment, like cars, food or wine. Everyone's tastes are different. There is no "best" speaker, only the one you think is best for you. When you shop for speakers, listen to several models with familiar music. Take your favorite discs with you when you shop and identify speakers that sound good to you. Your experience in listening to live music is a good way to evaluate speakers. The speaker should sound natural to your ears, have balanced tone quality and should be easy to listen to for long periods. Listen to the same speaker several times before making a final decision.

2. Speakers:

There are many types of speakers: floorstanding, bookshelf, satellite, in- wall and on-wall models. Your choice should be based on personal preference. Here's a summary of each type: floorstanding and bookshelf speakers generally have the best overall sound because the speakers and enclosures are performance matched. They take floor space, a consideration for some homeowners. Satellite speakers are very small speakers that are used with a subwoofer and take much less space. In-Wall speakers have good sound and the grills can be painted to match the walls. On-wall speakers are very popular with flat-panel televisions.

3. Speaker Wire:

You may have already bought the top-of-the-line audio system with massive speakers complete with extended treble and subwoofers, as well as audio processors and software that have dedicated memory and a significant computing power to process large and high quality files. One thing that most music lovers and audio buffs frequently forget, however, is the type of speaker wire that they will use. There has been much debate about whether the type of speaker wire will affect the sound output, and the verdict is yes.Here are some of the different classifications of the types of speaker cables for you to check out.

Gold, silver, copper. Most wires are made of copper, but some high end wire manufacturers actually use gold and silver for the primary metal component of the wires. While copper is cheap and very malleable, one should also note that the metals should have certain conductive qualities to be usable for speaker wires. Depending on how well you want the sound bytes to be transmitted from your music player to the speakers, you may want to upgrade to fancier materials. Gold as a semiconductor, for instance, is also used for computer chips in small amounts because of its good conducting capacities.

Speaker gauge. The speaker gauge of the wire is the over-all thickness of the wire itself. In general, you should have wires that have a gauge size of at least 12 to 18, since this is the minimum size required to properly transmit audio signals. Keep in mind that the lower the gauge size, the larger and thicker the body of the wire is. The thicker gauges are useful for high quality speakers or for audio systems that need to carry sound information to various parts of the house, instead of just one set of speakers. This is because thicker wires allow for more information transfer at any given period of time.