By HAKIM HASSAN hakim@thestar.com.my

Speakers have always played an important role in enriching the media experience, especially in the living room or in an enclosed area, where it is often part of the home theatre system.

Although there are many brands out there to choose from, there are few factors that you need to consider before buying the new speakers that you’ve been eyeing for quite some time.

One of the factors is the size of the room.  Basically, how big or small the room is will determine what type of speakers you should buy.

When you have small speakers in a medium or large room, the sound will be hollow and washed out or drowned out by other noises.

The last thing you want to do is to increase the volume of the small speakers to compensate for the room size, and it would lead to sound distortion.

What you need to do is understand the actual dimension of the room to ensure excellent sound quality because speakers often interact with the place.

What it means is that if you have a small room, it’s not advisable to have a huge setup because specific speakers have to be placed at a reasonable distance before it can be fully heard.

The distance from the wall to the speaker is also significant as the audio might bounce off the wall to produce an echo and this could dampen the listening experience.

So how do you determine if it’s a large, medium or small room? To explain it simply, a small room is around the size of a regular bedroom, while a medium room is roughly the size of a living room and a large room refers to event spaces or halls.

According to Audiogurus, when picking out speakers, check the specification that gives the sensitivity rating of the speaker.

This will be a number that indicates how much output is delivered when fed with one watt of power and measured from a meter away. The higher the sensitivity rating of a speaker, the less amplifier power it needs to produce volume.

It means that the speaker can play louder than a comparable speaker with a lower sensitivity rating, assuming the amplifier is identical.

For example, a loudspeaker with a sensitivity rating of 85dB SPL (Sound Pressure Level) is going to need a lot more amplifier power than one with a rating of 94 dB SPL.

Sound pressure or acoustic pressure is the local pressure deviation from the ambient (average, or equilibrium) atmospheric pressure, caused by a sound wave.

Another thing that should be considered is a subwoofer; this is for low frequencies, or for the bass to be reproduced properly without overworking the other speakers.

This is vital, especially for music listening and also for watching movies because sufficient bass allows for full immersion of your content.

Although some tower speakers have been marketed as being able to produce bass, it is not advisable to buy these because you wouldn’t be able to have the full audio experience.

Understanding each speaker and its role in sound reproduction is essential to ensure that it can be fully heard.

Finally, consider the presence of children or small animals in the house when buying speakers. Having a bookshelf speaker could be dangerous if placed in high places as there is a chance of these speakers falling over the children or small animals.

To conclude, before splashing the cash on that shiny new home theatre system, understand the different aspects that can affect your speakers’ performance.

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