What I Learnt about Buying High-end Speakers
I finally set up a high-end audio system — two Q Acoustics 5040 floorstanding speakers powered by a Denon DRA-800 receiver. Here’s what I learnt:
‣ Be clear about your primary goal:
Do you want to sit on the sofa and listen to music with exceptional quality? This guide is for you.
Do you want to walk around the house without audio interruption? Buy a whole-home system.
Do you want a speaker that you can take with you on a hike or to the lake? Buy the Bose Portable Smart Speaker.
Do you want to sit on the sofa and watch a movie or documentary? Buy 5.1 speakers powered by a 5.1 receiver.
Do you want a laptop with great audio quality (for a laptop)? Buy the Macbook Pro 16-inch.
Do you want a phone with surprisingly great audio quality (for a phone)? The iPhone 15 sounds great, better than what I thought a phone speaker could deliver.
Don’t answer “all of the above” because no speaker does everything well. Pick a primary goal, and the speaker will do that well, and handle other goals to a lesser or greater degree. If you don’t pick a primary goal, you may later realise that the thing you care about most doesn’t work well.
It’s no different from buying a vehicle: if your priority is off-roading, buy a 4-wheel-drive body-on-frame SUV. You can also drive it on the road, but it won’t be the best there. If you don’t know why you’re buying a car, you won’t be able to buy a good one. When people are confused about what to do, whether buying something or figuring out their next job, the confusion is often about the goal — not the method.
For me the primary goal is clear: sit on the sofa and enjoy music with exceptional quality.
‣ Once I gained clarity that music is the priority, the course of action was to buy stereo speakers powered by a stereo receiver, not 5.1. Why?
99% of music is in stereo.
When I listened to multichannel music, the sound was coming from all around me. When I switched to stereo, the sound came only from in front of me. The soundstage was narrower, but it didn’t significantly hurt the experience1. It was different, not worse. As an analogy, recent iPads run their screen at 120 FPS, but when I use an iPad that can only manage 60, I don’t find it worse.
When you buy a multi-channel system, a lot of your money is going into buying multiple speakers and support for multiple channels in the receiver. I spent 1.7 lakh on stereo speakers powered by a stereo receiver. If I’d chosen 5.1, I wouldn’t get the same level of quality for 1.7 lakh. I’d have to spend 3 lakh or more.
Multichannel systems are often tuned for movies rather than music.
For all these reasons, if your priority is music, buy stereo speakers powered by a stereo receiver.
‣ There are active speakers, with HDMI and USB-C ports on the back, so you don’t need a separate receiver. But I wouldn’t recommend them — they are few and far between, and they sound worse than passive speakers powered by a separate receiver, for your budget. Put differently, you have to spend significantly more to get the same sound quality. My system already cost 1.7 lakh.
‣ Prefer floorstanders to bookshelf speakers — the latter sound worse. They require a subwoofer, without which the music sounds anaemic. You can hear the notes, but they feel hollow. A sub which means yet another cable and one more thing to turn on before listening and off afterward. Floorstanders look cleaner: a single, integrated unit unlike a bookshelf speaker perched on a stand plus a sub — that’s 2 extra components. Finally, floorstanders cost no more than bookshelf speakers when you add the cost of the sub and the stands.
‣ You don’t need a subwoofer, because floorstanders produce enough bass on their own2.
‣ Soundbars don’t produce great sound for your budget.
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Some receivers create virtual 5.1 from stereo. This is a gimmick — it sounds worse than listening in stereo.
Technically, any speaker — tower or bookshelf — can be designed either to work on its own or rely on a sub. If you buy a speaker designed to work with a sub but don’t buy one, music will lack strength. In practice, most floorstanders generate enough bass but many bookshelf speakers don’t.