This article is about common mistakes people make when setting up a stereo system. After reading this, we hope you’ll be able to tweak your system to improve its performance or fix a nagging problem you have not been able to figure out.

For this article, we will only be talking about two-channel stereo systems. For home theater enthusiasts, we have a video on home theater mistakes and another on media room mistakes that you can take a look at.

You would think that setting up a basic amplifier or receiver with a pair of speakers and a turntable and/or streaming source would be pretty simple. And it can be if you avoid these pitfalls we will be going over. These mistakes are in no particular order as they are all important to allow your system to give you a lot of enjoyment for many years to come.

Mistake #1

Arranging Your Components In Such a Way That You Create Hum or Noise In Your System

After encountering all kinds of hum in audio systems for decades, we can sometimes find it hard to find, and we call it demon hum! These are some primary causes we see creating about 95% of the hum we find in systems. The first is the improper grounding of your turntable. If your turntable has a ground wire, make sure it is solidly connected at both ends. The second is having your phono cartridge or phono preamp too close to a power transformer. This usually happens when you have a large power amplifier sitting right next to your turntable. This is always a simple fix by just separating them until you can no longer hear the hum.

The next is physical, where you may have your interconnects running parallel to AC power cords. We suggest you keep those separated by at least 12”, and if they need to cross, do so at a 90-degree angle.

Another thing we see happen is a ground loop between components. This usually happens when your subwoofer is plugged into a different outlet than the rest of your equipment and that outlet happens to be on a different phase than the one your gear is connected to.

The Fix

The fix is using a heavy-duty extension cord to put it on the same outlet as your system. Just make sure you add up the power needs of all your gear if you have a large system. The electrical aspects of a system are so important that we dedicated an entire video to it that you might enjoy.

Finally, with the advent of our wireless lives, we are starting to see people put wireless access points near their systems. We have seen these cause all kinds of strange noises that go away by simply moving the access point a little further away from the gear.

Mistake #2:

Your Turntable Is Too Close To a Speaker or Subwoofer

Turntables create sound by the stylus in the cartridge on your turntable following the microscopic grooves of your record. You don’t want anything added to those tiny vibrations. Speakers and subwoofers are just the opposite; they create sound by sending vibrations into the air. And if the vibrations from your speakers interact with the tonearm on your turntable, one of two things can happen.

The first will normally be pretty obvious and raise its head as acoustic feedback. This is a howling low-frequency sound caused by your turntable picking up vibrations from your speakers and sending that back into your amplifier and out to your speakers again. The howling will get worse as you increase the volume.

The second is basically the same principle but is less obvious as the vibrations picked up by your turntable are not bad enough to create acoustic feedback but can cancel out some of the music your turntable is trying to reproduce. One way to hear what might be happening is to listen to your turntable with headphones and your speakers turned off. If you have any feedback, you will probably hear clearer sound through headphones.

The Fix

The easiest fix for both of these is to try to get your turntable as far away as you can from your speakers, especially a subwoofer. This means that putting your turntable right next to a speaker on the same shelf is not a good idea. If your environment does not allow you to separate the speakers and turntable enough, isolation feet and platforms can be put under your speakers, which will help with this. Usually, if you can center your turntable on a separate platform between your speakers, most decent turntables have enough built-in isolation to prevent speaker vibrations from causing a problem.

Another fix is to use a special turntable mount that attaches to the wall like this one from Rega. These types of mounts also help if you have floors that flex a lot, causing your stylus to jump when you walk around in the room. And there are a variety of turntable isolation platforms that can improve most turntables.

Mistake #3

Not Giving Your Components Enough Room to Breathe

While this may not cause any immediate issues you can hear, having your equipment running too hot can reduce its lifespan.

The Fix

We usually see this with components stacked on top of each other. If there are ANY ventilation holes in the top of a piece of gear, you should give it at least 4” of clearance to breathe. So the simple rule is, if you see holes, don’t stack.

Another is putting everything in a cabinet that has no way for the air inside the cabinet to circulate. We advise you to consider equipment cabinets that have either active cooling or a fairly open back with no doors or doors air can easily pass through. If you have a cabinet you really like but is lacking in ventilation, you can always add fans to help circulate the air.

It's also a bad idea to have a shelf that is barely wider than the piece of gear unless there are no ventilation holes anywhere on the piece of gear. Try to have at least 2” on the sides and 4” on the top at a minimum.

Mistake #4

Using Incorrect Cable Connections

There is a reason you find a left and right connection for all of your cables and why your speaker cables have positive and negative connection points.

The Fix

You want to be sure all of your interconnect cables between components are all plugged into the correct connector. This is usually very simple to check as most are colored red or white on the inside of the plug or have a red or white ring around it, and your cables will identify the right and left channels. When your favorite band mixed your music, they wanted you to hear it a certain way, and if any of your cables are reversed, you will be missing out.

On speaker wires, the same thing applies for right and left, but a big mistake we find is not making sure the positive wire connector at your amplifier goes to the positive connector on your speaker. Reversing these is far worse than flipping channels, as it puts your speakers out of phase. This greatly reduces the bass you hear in the sweet spot and puts everything out of focus. Check and then check again to make sure you have this right.

Mistake #5

Bad Speaker Placement

Where you place your speakers matters a whole lot in how they sound. If you are more of a casual listener who never sits down to listen, getting this right is not as important, but if you like to sit down and get into your favorite music, speaker placement makes a big difference. Typically, most speakers perform best a little bit away from room boundaries. We see a lot of systems where a great pair of speakers are shoved right against the back wall, and when we ask the client if we can move them out a little bit, they are shocked at how much better they sound.

The Fix

Taking this one step further, you want them placed symmetrically in relation to your favorite listening spot. In most cases, setting them up so they roughly have an equilateral triangle to a 2-3 ratio is a good starting point. In other words, if the speakers are 8’ apart, your main seat would be 8-12 feet away. This, of course, is just very basic, and we will have an extremely in-depth video and article on speaker placement that you can check out coming soon.

Mistake #6

Forgetting About Basic Acoustics

It makes us cringe when we see a picture of a $ 100,000-plus stereo system in a room with bare sheetrock walls and hard surface floors. Some reflections are good, but too many are terrible for your sound. You want to hear the music coming out of your speakers and not your speakers plus the sound reflecting off lots of hard surfaces.

The Fix

There are some simple ways to make your room sound a lot better and not have it look like a recording studio. Curtains, tapestries, canvas art, books, wood shutters, rugs, and even plants all keep the sound from bouncing around your room. An easy way to see where your walls should have something on them is to sit in your main spot and have a helper walk down the side wall with a mirror. Anywhere on that wall where you can see your speaker in the mirror is where you should start with something, even if it's a large artificial plant or, better yet, a bookcase full of books and your records or CDs. One step further is purpose-built acoustic panels. These vary from the ones that definitely look like you are in a studio to more contemporary styles that actually look like art. Acoustics are so important that we made an in-depth video and article on them here.

Bonus

Hold onto your boxes!

We’ll give you a bonus that may not apply to everyone, but we think it is a good idea to hold onto the boxes your gear came in if you have space for them somewhere. They are great to have when you move, and we’ve found having the original boxes can enhance the resale value when you get the urge to upgrade a component.

We’re here to help!

If you have further questions, contact our experts via chat, phone, or email. Or simply visit one of our world-class showrooms to experience speakers, projectors, TVs, and everything in between for yourself before you make a purchase!

If you’re planning your home theater or media room, check out our Home Theater Design page, where we have everything Home Theater related, including our FREE Home Theater Design Tool.

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