The importance of speakers

If you're listening to music, watching TV, or even talking on the phone, you're using speakers. Speakers, after all, are what translates recorded or broadcast material into sound waves that you can actually hear.

And the quality and type of speakers has a tremendous impact on how good that material sounds.

For example, have you ever sat on hold listening to your favorite song? I'll bet you found it at least somewhat annoying, because you couldn't hear all of the nuances of the music that you're used to.

That's because telephone speakers (in the earpiece, or even on a speakerphone), are not what we call full-range speakers. They're only designed to reproduce the human speaking tones, which range from about 110Hz for a low male voice, to about 1000 Hz for a higher female voice, up to about 3000 Hz for a child's scream.

On the other hand, the full range of human hearing is from about 20 Hz to about 20,000 Hz (20 KHz). Good full-range speakers reproduce all of that sound, and the entire range is used in music and movies. If you're not hearing the upper and lower ranges, you're missing a lot of important information in the sound track - and it just doesn't sound good!

Now, consider the speakers you're using for your current TV and movie-watching. If you're like many people, you listen through the speakers that came with the TV. Fortunately, TV manufacturers tend to be really good at video - unfortunately, audio is not really their specialty.

Many people consider these speakers to be "courtesy speakers" - that is, speakers that are included to allow you to set up and watch the TV without having to do a lot of work. But that doesn't make them good.

Lots of people have tried hooking their TV into their stereo, which usually results in far better sound than with just the TV speakers. We often hook up "surround sound" receivers and speakers - and the results are tremendous! Click here for more information on our home theater installations.

There are, of course, wide variances in the sound range of different types of speakers, so be sure the speakers you select will cover the entire range.

In the next few blogs, I'll talk about different aspects of speakers.

In the meantime, please visit us on the web at http://www.inspired-electronics.com/, or call us at 847.471.4420. We can answer your audio and video related questions, and help you get set up for the best home theater!