5 things that a high fidelity audio must satisfy: Sound quality of multimedia speakers

Everyone loves music. A sweet and warm music is pleasing to listen. However, people also love to listen to a music with lot of punch and kick. A good loudspeaker system is essential for such a rich sound. A number of brands are known for their quality sound. However choosing a high quality sound system needs careful study over the technical specification of the system.

So this article is about requirements for a quality audio.

A good sound system must have

1. Quality midrange sound (from 260 hz to 5khz)

2. Good bass from 80hz to 250hz

3. Subbass below 80hz

4. Good highs above 5khz till the audible range say 20khz

1. Quality midrange:

The human vocal frequencies and the harmonics of most musical instruments lie in the midfrequency range. A budget speaket system usually have either a mono midrange or stereo midrange. Mono means only one speaker producing the sound whereas stereo has two speakers. Most music however are recorded in stereo format. A stereo sound has more quality information than a mono sound system. A high sensitive midrange speaker can produce sounds at a good spl at low power levels (sound pressure level - a measurement for determining the loudness of sound). Eventhough a midrange speaker is not good at bass it can image bass well when tuned properly.

2. Good bass:

The power requirements for low freqency reproduction is usually high. So a good bass response needs high power amplifiers atleast above 10 watts. Thus the cost of the system increases to some extent. Usually a sound system with good bass and midrange appears to be full. Even though they lack subbass and highs they are good enough for those who are in budget to listen to music. And at higher power levels the response will be more than enough.

3. Subbass

Adding subbass requires still more power from an amplifier. A subbass system plays atmost below 120 hz. (e.g. earthquake sound). The lower cutoff might atleast be around 60 hz. A good subbass system plays down till 20 hz however the cost of getting such products are not flexible due to the pricing of those products. Subbass usually below 80 hz is called thx bass. It is less directional i.e. one cannot predict the location of the subwoofer producing below 80hz if it is kept hidden. Also subbass mingles well with the main speakers well whereas bass frequencies will not. Subbass is more felt than heard.

Subwoofers usually are more notably present in 5.1 home theatre systems. But there are also systems that just only have the label of subwoofer but never produce below 80 hz.

4. High frequencies

High frequencies are mostly present in high definition sound systems and professional sound systems. These frequencies are usually produced by speakers called tweeter. Harmonics of most music instruments are in the high frequency range. (e.g. sound of waterfalls)

5. So in a high end system a broad range of sound spectrum 20hz to 20000hz is covered completely.

Also we might need atleast three types of speakers to cover the entire audio spectrum.