Stereo Building for Dummies

I got asked the other day by a coworker about how I go about building an audio system, and I realized that while I've been working on this for more than a year, that I never actually posted it. So here it is. A tier list is coming soon. 

[Caveat 1: go talk to your local hifi shop about the used gear they have available *after* you’ve thought about the basic questions below. I know the knock on stereo stores is that they’re full of arrogant assholes who talk down to anyone who doesn’t share their expertise, but that has genuinely not been my experience. They can help you figure out something in your budget that will play nicely together, they can setup and let you listen to things you’re interested in, and they know the local market. I’ll recommend some shops where I’ve had good experiences at the bottom of this post.

Caveat 2: all of this gets really complicated really quickly and has a lot of nuance. This is a thousand-foot view of my personal attitude towards hi fi systems. Your mileage, as always, may vary.]

My basic rules for audio gear:

1. You like what you like. The most important factor in judging an audio system is also the simplest: does it sound good, to you, in your space, and listening to the things you want to listen to?[i] Audio nerds spend a lot of time arguing about objectivity and measurements, and that seems silly to me. Do you like the $5 headphones that came with your phone? Sweet! Enjoy! Do you want to spend $25,000 on a set of Macintosh separates? Awesome, please invite me over to listen (and maybe add me to your will?).

2. Used gear is your friend. Audiophiles spend a lot of time chasing the new hotness, and a lot of their gear ends up in the market used. You have to be a bit careful with used gear from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but a good used hifi shop will have tested and potentially worked on gear they’re putting out for sale, and can talk to you about it. Outside of speakers, most of my new-to-me gear has been used.

3. Components interact in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Even high-quality speakers may sound funny when connected to a particular amplifier or source, and it gets infinitely weirder in a separates-based system.

4. No system is the end-all, be-all. Everything can be upgraded. Nothing is forever. Components break, and some of them can’t be easily repaired or replaced. That’s okay. Embrace the change. Half the fun of audio is figuring out what you can swap in for a particular piece of gear and the changes that doing so can bring.

Some basic questions to ask yourself before you embark on this journey:

Here are the basic questions you should ask yourself before you build a hifi system or consult with an expert on one (i.e. these are the questions that I wish I had asked myself before I started buying cool stuff):

1. What do you want your system to do? Are you listening to music, watching TV or movies, or some combination of the two? Are you building it in a place where you have restrictions on volume, or a particularly weird-shaped or hard-surfaced room?

2. What source or sources are you interested in? Are you going to listen to digital streaming music? CDs? Vinyl? TV? The radio (terrestrial or satellite)? 8-tracks?

3. Do you think your use case is going to shift meaningfully over the next few years? I.e. suppose you’re building a simple stereo setup for music right now, but do you think you’re going to want to start building a home theater system in the next year?

These questions will help you right-size your system and avoid having to swap components out too quickly. Understand your use case. For example:

• If you’re just listening to music now but you want to build to a home theater soon, you might want to spend a little more to get an AV-capable receiver rather than a stereo receiver or an integrated amplifier that won’t accommodate more than two channels.

• If you know you want to set up multiple listening zones or rooms in the future, you’ll want to choose an amplifier or receiver with more than one zone available.

• If you are about to move from a house to an apartment, you might want to buy better bookshelf speakers rather than tower speakers or consider adding a good headphone-based setup.

• If you’re only streaming music from the internet, you might want to consider a smart speaker.

• If you want to build towards a full home system, you probably want to consider amplifiers or sources that are compatible with one of the major systems like Roon.

The Basics, aka Hifi 101

To build a hifi system, you need at a minimum three things: 1) one or more speakers[ii] to produce sound, 2) an amplifier to provide power to the speakers to produce sound (to “drive” them), and 3) one or more sources to provide the audio signal (analog or digital). The speakers are connected to the amplifier via speaker cables, and the amplifier is connected to the source or sources via interconnects.[iii] The sources get their audio signal from media, which can be analog (records, cassette tapes, VHS, AM/FM radio) or digital (CDs, streaming music, DVDs, etc.).

My general philosophy on system building is to maximize the bang for your buck. For me this means picking, in descending order of importance: Speakers > Amplifier  > Media > Source > Speaker cables & interconnects > power cables.[iv] I.e. your speakers matter more than your amplification, which matters more than the media you’re using, which matters more than the quality of the source, etc. There are exceptions, and a really, really lousy source or lossy media is going to impact your experience, but if forced to choose when upgrading one piece to a better option, this is the order I default to.

Consumer vs. Prosumer vs. Audiophile vs. Commercial

I tend to think about audio components as falling into four broad categories, ranging from Consumer to Commercial. In general, for me:

• Consumer: easy setup, minimal configuration, lower quality sound (or at least much less focused on objective measurement). Think, e.g. Bose, Sonos, home theater gear from companies like Klipsch, most Sony products, etc. For streaming, this is Pandora or Spotify (or until a year or two ago, Apple Music).

• Prosumer: still mostly relatively easy to configure and setup, but with more customizations and flexibility. Usually a little more focused on quality and measurements. Think, e.g., Bluesound, lower-end products from serious hi-fi manufacturers like PS Audio, Cambridge Audio, NAD, and some of the more home-theater focused products from companies like Kef. For streaming, this is the modern iteration of Apple Music.

• Audiophile: usually requires a lot more configuration or setup and is much more focused on “quality” and objective measurements for sound. This includes most of the offerings from specialized hi-fi companies like Schiit, Devialet, Dali, Kef, etc. For streaming, this is things like Tidal or Qboz, which specialize in “HD” music and native/easy integrations with music systems like Roon.

• Commercial: weird space. Know nothing about it. Gets really expensive really fast and has some manufacturers that appear to focus specifically on the commercial market.

I mostly live in the audiophile category, though I use a number of prosumer components (mostly Bluesound) to drive hi fi systems in my house, and I own and regularly use a number of pairs of consumer-grade headphones (Bose, Apple, Beats, etc.).

Let’s talk Components

Speakers

[Tl;dr: tower speakers are bigger and easier to drive, but take up more space. Bookshelf speakers are smaller and less intrusive, but can be a little more sensitive to amplification.]

Two broadly accepted categories of speakers, based on size: 1) bookshelf or standmount speakers, and 2) tower speakers. Bookshelf/standmounts are generally smaller (and some of them even fit on bookshelves!), and need to sit on something to get the speakers to an appropriate ear height for most listening cases. This can be wall mounts, shelves, furniture, or dedicated speaker mounts. For higher end systems, the things they sit on start to matter for purposes of sound distortion/resonance/etc., but for these purposes I’m not going to get into it other than to say, listen to the speakers and see if they sound good. Standmounts typically have at least two speaker cones in them: a small one (a tweeter) for higher frequencies, and a larger one (a woofer) for mid/lower frequencies. Tower speakers are larger and usually have more than two individual speaker cones, often as many as five or six that all cover specific ranges of frequencies. They usually rest on the floor, and may have several different styles of feet depending on your listening room and its floor.

Unintuitively, standmount speakers are also usually, but not always, harder for an amplifier to power, and generally you want a more powerful amplifier for smaller speakers, while towers will let you get away with a less powerful amp (each speaker has a specific resistance, measured in Ohms, and it gets … complicated. Waaaaay beyond the scope of this post.)

I really love a good tower speaker, but they can take up a lot of room so I have ended up mostly with bookshelf speakers.

Picking speakers is more of an art than a science. The gold standard is to listen to them in the space you’re going to mostly use them, with the system you’re mostly going to be using, and to listen to the full range of media you’re going to be listening to on them. Almost never get to do that, though, particularly for inexpensive components. I have a 27-song playlist where each song tests a different capability and I listen to at least pieces of each of them before I buy a speaker if I can. If I can’t listen to them, these are my baseline criteria: 1) are the speakers heavy? (speakers are, at heart, magnets, and generally denser magnets are more capable of a variety of sound reproduction) 2) are the cabinets solidly built? 3) does it have 5-way binding posts for connecting speaker wire (5-ways are more expensive for manufacturers and tend to be on better speakers, though if you’re looking at vintage components the spring-loaded clamps that end up on cheaper modern speakers were the standard, even on some pretty high-end components).

[Note: I’m just going to address passive, unpowered speakers here. These are speakers that connect to external amplification by speaker wire rather than connecting directly to a wall outlet for power. There’s a whole category of speakers that plug into power outlets (active speakers) and they have some different considerations. Smart speakers are a subset of active speakers.]

Amplification

[Tl;dr: if this is your first system, hard to go wrong with an entry level stereo amplifier from a reputable manufacturer. I default to Yamaha for programmability and easy of use, but Onkyo, Denon, and Sony also make good systems. Decent, used receivers are cheap and easily accessible.]

Traditional hifi systems (separates systems) are an amalgamation of a number of separate devices: 1) a pre-amplifier (which generally includes source selection, volume control, an initial amplification stage), 2) a digital audio converter (aka DAC), 3) the power amplifier (which steps up the audio signal to a level sufficient to drive un-powered speakers), and 4) sometimes other more specialized functions like a phono amplifier.

An integrated amplifier is a device that combines the separate devices from a traditional, separates-based hi-fi system into a single device. A super-integrated amplifier is an integrated amplifier + some kind of source (a streaming music player, a built in CD player, etc.). A receiver is just an integrated amplifier with a built-in AM/FM radio tuner. A stereo receiver is a receiver that drives only two channels: a right channel, and a left channel. A home theater receiver/AV receiver is a receiver that is designed to power more than two channels (usually at least a left, right, center, side right, and side left, but may include rear channels, presence channels, multiple subwoofers, etc.) and is intended to provide some version of surround sound (though are generally also capable of competent stereo playback if other channels aren’t needed). All of these things have a lot of nuance and complexity, but this is a solid base of understanding. Each of these devices are available in a huge range of prices, from $50 to $10,000+.

Audiophile purists often insist that separates are the way to go and receivers (and lower end integrated amplifiers) aren’t good enough. In general, for me, I mostly default to integrated and super-integrated amplifiers because I don’t want to fall down the rabbit hole of trying to balance multiple components, but I do appreciate a number of the upgrades you get when you jump from a receiver to an integrated amplifier. For lower-price point systems, I will almost always default to receivers because 1) you get more bang for the buck and 2) it’s really easy to find decent, used receivers as audio nerds like myself are constantly upgrading and selling off old equipment at good prices. Don’t be afraid of used amplifiers, especially if it’s somewhere you can listen to it before buying to make sure it doesn’t have any obvious defects.

Media

[Tl;dr: for an entry level system, any kind of  modern media will be fine. If you think you’re going to end up on the audiophile path, it might be worth building around a lossless streaming service like Tidal, or committing to the CD or vinyl life.]

The quality of the media you’re using matters, but generally less than the speakers or the amplifier (unless you’re trying to play an old record that’s 10% dust bunnies by weight, or your CD is heavily scratched, or you’re playing an old .mp3 that’s been compressed sixteen times). With physical media you’re generally stuck with what you’ve got. When it comes to modern digital media, especially streaming, you have a few more options vis-à-vis quality. A full discussion of streaming quality is waaaay beyond the scope of this, but I will say for me generally, I mostly don’t listen to media that’s lower than CD-quality; no Spotify streams for me! The general industry term for at least CD-quality is lossless (thought it’s not actually lossless) as opposed to lossy, where the audio files are compressed for ease of transmission to the point where they lose some frequencies. Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal default to lossless (though in different formats). Spotify defaults to lossy, though I believe that’s changing soon. I can absolutely hear the difference between a lossy .mp3 and a lossless .flac or Tidal stream on a decent system, though I will compromise to lossy sometimes when I’m listening to Bluetooth headphones and in a less-than-ideal listening situation.

Most network streamers let you use most of the major available services (except Apple Music, which is generally limited to Apple-branded products and, randomly, Sonos) so your equipment will likely not commit you to any one media down the road and you can start with anything you’re already using. Similarly, all CD players, tape players, and vinyl on the market can play any modern media of those types so your initial choices of media won’t lock you into a particular upgrade path.

Source

[Tl;dr: don’t spend a lot of time worrying about your sources until you start to get up in price point, unless you’re wanting to listen to vinyl (especially vintage vinyl). Start with an old iPhone/iPod/tablet/laptop or buy a cheap DVD player at Goodwill. Yes, DVD players can all play audio CDs.]

The source is the thing that provide the audio signal. This can be a turntable (aka record player), a CD player, a network streaming device (aka a streamer), a radio, a TV, etc. Particularly in the digital space (CDs, streaming, DVDs, etc.), my general position is that quality of the source doesn’t matter very much until you get to a reasonably high-resolving system[v] (i.e. until you’re spending a substantial amount of money, the difference between a $10 Discman and a $5,000 CD transport from PS Audio isn’t super noticeable). For analog media (aka vinyl), the source matters a great deal more. Turntables vary a LOT in their quality, and a cheap turntable playing a brand new record can sound much worse than a decent turntable playing an old, dirty record.

There’s a huge variety of sources out there, and I end up using a bunch of different types. For hi-fi racks I tend to default to things in the Bluesound Node range (~$500) as the floor for digital streaming, though I do also run some things off of old iOS devices. But I’m bougie like that. For CD players, the sweet spot seems to be used DVD/Bluray players from companies like Philips and Sony; you can often find them for $20 or $30 at Goodwill and they’re great digital transport devices. For turntables, I wouldn’t trust anything under the $100 price point just because I worry about cartridges physically damaging records, and those turntables tend to use proprietary cartridges/needles and limit your ability to upgrade.

The place where a source is more likely to matter in the digital space is when we start talking about the digital-to-analog conversion. Speakers are analog devices. Anytime you’re playing a digital source through a speaker, the conversion is happening somewhere along the way, and there are a number of places where you could theoretically have that conversion happening. Take, for example, a simple system of a CD player stereo receiver bookshelf speakers. If you connect the CD player audio out jacks to the stereo receiver in jacks via an RCA cable, the digital signal is being converted in the CD player to an analog signal, and then that analog signal is transmitted to the receiver and then to the speakers. If you connect the CD player via optical cable from the digital out to the optical in on the receiver, the receiver is taking a digital signal from the CD player, converting it to analog, and sending it to the speakers. Each DAC is different and can vary in both quality and default sound. By default and for complicated reasons, I tend to trust DACs in higher end equipment (which usually means in the amplifier stage, especially in inexpensive systems), so I tend to try to get digital signals directly to the amplifier.  This means that I really don’t much care about digital sources, especially in the early stages, though I do care about higher-quality analog sources like tape players or turntables.

Interconnects

Interconnects are the cables that connect components in a hi-fi system. Interconnects can be digital (HDMI, optical, SPDIF, etc.) or analog (RCA, Component, etc.).

I’m honestly not convinced that the quality of interconnects matters in any meaningful way for the kinds of systems I listen to. I default to Amazon Basics for most things (one of my favorite hi-fi companies in fact specifically and weirdly tells you to use the cheapest, shittiest USB printer cable you can to connect their high-end DACs to a computer), BUT for my turntable I run a very high end RCA cable that I bought on sale. Using the $5 Amazon cable just felt too much like putting a $50 Discount Tire wheel on a Ferrari. But again, I’m bougie like that.

Honest to god, any competently made interconnect will work for almost any of your purposes until you get into the stratosphere, cost-wise.

Speaker cables

Unless your speakers are a long way away from your amplifier, this mostly doesn’t matter either. I tend to use Amazon Basics 12- or 16-gauge speaker wire that I buy by the 250-ft spool. The 12-gauge ends up being a little too thick for some components (especially cheaper ones), and my longest cable runs are like 50 feet, so I’m gradually swapping to 16-gauge. Amazon Basics is fine, as is the in-house brand Best Buy carries in a pinch.

For anything that I’m plugging and unplugging regularly, I like banana plugs just for ease of use, but direct connections are totally fine too (and are less likely to unplug themselves if you shift a component).

A few words about Smart Speakers

Another option for first-time stereo purchasers are all-in-one smart speakers. A smart speaker consists of a speaker, an amplifier, a pre-amplifier, a DAC, and a streamer all in a single cabinet. Most of the major audio manufacturers make something in this space, and they vary greatly in quality and cost from Amazon’s Echo Dot ($30) to the Devialet Phantom ($6,700 apiece) to even more expensive. They run the gamut from consumer to prosumer to audiophile to commercial. I personally have used a number of the Sonos line (Sonos One, Play 5, etc.), Amazon’s Echo Dot/Echo (the small tower)/Echo Show (the 7” screen), Apple’s Homepod and Homepod Mini, an older Samsung offering, the Google Assistant puck, and the Kef LSX system.

A smart speaker has the advantage of being a compact system designed by a single team and are (mostly) extensively tested before manufacturing to make sure each of the components play well with each other. Many have built-in voice assistant support (Siri, Alexa, and Hey Google) while some require the use of smart device apps (Sonos, Bluesound, Kef). Many of them are now able to be paired to provide stereo sound (Sonos, Apple), and some have pretty interesting room correction and analysis built in (Apple, Kef, Devialet).

It's beyond the scope of this (already length) post, but it’s worth taking a look at streaming speakers if they fit your use case. For example, my basement system is just a pair of Sonos Ones (Shadow edition) that I picked up at Costo on sale a few years ago despite my general misgivings around Sonos, and they’re perfectly fine for that use case. I had a pair of Kef LSX sitting on my desk for four years that I really loved until they experienced their own version of the red ring of death, and while I have replaced them with passives I look forward to eventually getting them repaired and finding them a new home.

Conclusions:

Welcome to a weird and rewarding (and potentially very expensive) hobby! Go forth and build your system. Let me know what you end up with and how you like it! It can be quite the journey, and I anticipate that I will be upgrading my system(s) until I’m in my 80s as cool new stuff becomes available.

What’s next?

The dirty secret in audio is that in the end, especially as you increase the money you’ve invested, the system you build makes less difference than the place that you’re listening to it. An oddly shaped room, too many hard surfaces, the arrangement of speakers or other furniture, where you’re sitting when you listen, can all create really hard listening experiences and I’m finally to the point where I’m spending a fair amount of time and effort trying to do room correction. Look for that in a future post.

Audio Shops I recommend in the PNW:

• Desco Audio and Video (Olympia, WA). Great shop a mile up the hill from my house. Decent selection of used stuff and things on consignment, and a good mix of new stuff from the reasonably priced to the VERY expensive. Also do custom installation for high-end systems and they have a good rep for that. I’ve bought several pairs of speakers, some Bluesound gear, some used gear from the owner, and good Salamander hifi racks and cabinets.

• Gig Harbor Audio (Gig Harbor, WA). This is one of the more interesting stores I’ve been into. A great variety of new and used gear (with the used gear mostly listed online quite nicely). Also has an interesting selection of imported wine and does wine tastings. Well worth a visit. Everything from inexpensive, entry level gear to top-end audiophile stuff. I’ve bought a couple pairs of speakers and a couple integrated amplifiers from him. He’ll spend time with you to walk through your use case and help you find something that fits for you and your budget. He’ll also generally setup almost anything you want to audition and give you time and control to experiment (I ended up listening to probably 30 tracks before I bought my used Devialet from him). [Also, every time I go in there he’s playing an album I either end up buying or downloading later. Great and eclectic taste in music.]

• Hawthorne Stereo (Seattle, WA). Great hifi shop that’s been a stable in the Seattle scene for decades. I have a pair of speakers in my closet that my dad bought there for my mom in the late 70s. Huge selection of new and used, and a great interface online for looking at used gear. One of the strongest appeals of moving to Seattle is easier access to this shop.

• Fred’s Sound of Music (Portland, OR). Another old-school hifi shop in the Hawthorn district in Portland. This is where I bought my first receiver and speakers (Boston Acoustics CR65s), and I try to make time to stop in whenever I can. Pretty decent selection and very accommodating to buyers who want to audition gear.

 

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[i] Adapted from the Whiskey Tribe’s rule #1: “The "best" whisk(e)y is the whiskey you like to drink, the way you like to drink it.”

[ii] Most music in the FM era has been primarily recorded/mixed in stereo, meaning two channels of sound: one right, one left. For most music, it will play back best on two speakers.

[iii] As discussed a little below, there are systems where two or all three of these components can be combined in a single device, but these three functions are required for music playback.s

[iv] This is assuming you’re using a integrated amp or a receiver as discussed below; this question gets way more complicated when you start looking a traditional, separates-based hi fi system.

[v] With the caveat that some very cheap sources, like some kinds of phones, limit the quality of music you can play. Similarly, some kinds of transmission do the same; if you’re streaming anything to an amplifier via Bluetooth, there’s a pretty hard cap on how good the sound quality can be Bluetooth = mostly bad for music.