How To Choose Between The Types Of Speakers Available For Your Home Entertainment System
What types of speakers are available and how should I choose between them?
Your choice of what kind of speakers you want really depends on what you listen to, how you like to listen to it, and where you like to listen to it. What that means, essentially, is that if you have a large space that you need to fill with a lot of audio, then you're going to want one type of system, versus a very small contained space such as a condominium or dorm room, you're going to want a different type of speaker system, and the variables are huge. There are a number of different ways of looking at speakers. First of all, let's start with indoor versus outdoor. A lot of folks like to listen to music outside - backyard, front yard. The biggest difference between an outdoor speaker and an indoor speaker is the fact that outdoor speakers tend to be weather-resistant. They tend to be resistant not only to water, but to pollution, to critters that like to crawl inside of them and take up nests, and as a result they tend to look a little more industrial, be camouflaged as outdoor foliage, a rock, or a tree in some cases - different types of things. Indoor speakers are designed to be used inside, so they don't have that kind of weather-proof application to them. Where we have clients that use indoor speakers for outdoor arrangements, you find that they fail in a matter of weeks, months - never longer than a couple of years. There is a tremendous amount of difference when you're talking about speakers in terms of individual speakers, speaker pairs, or speaker systems. What most stereo manufacturers recommend is that you match your speakers, which means that you pick speakers that were designed to work together with the amplifier that you are using to send audio to. So a matched speaker set is very important. Most important when you are matching speakers is what they call their impedence load. There are speakers out there that are designed to provide a resistance of four ohms. There are speakers out there that provide a resistance of eight ohms, or even more, sixteen ohms. If you end up matching the wrong speaker set with your amplifier, you could create a problem with your amplifier. Amplifier could shut down; your speakers could blow out. So it's very important that, regardless of whether you are looking at individual speakers or a speaker set or a pair or speakers, that they match the amplifier rating. There are a couple of manufacturers out there that offer wireless speakers, and while we think that at some point in the future they will be a very useful part of a home system setup, right now we don't install them. We don't recommend them. There's a lot of issues with wireless. The largest one right now has to do with the ability to receive audio correctly. Wireless speakers are very prone to being interrupted, either by someone walking in front of them, or you turn the microwave oven on, or you're doing something along those lines. So we don't install them. We don't recommend them for our clients.
