Your TV and speakers might be in the WRONG place – how to instantly boost sound quality

LOOKING beyond the furor of the Will Smith slap, Oscar viewers will have noted that the film Dune won the Academy Award for Best Sound.

The soundtrack’s otherworldly tones and heavy bass are deeply immersive – and you can bring theater-quality sound to your home as long as your setup is positioned correctly.

Home theaters have more potential than most owners realize

The trick is to understand the behavior of sound waves – a bit of science to improve your viewing.

The setup

“Proper speaker positioning goes a really long way,” Ben Carter, co-founder of U-Turn Audio, told The Sun in an exclusive interview.

U-Turn Audio has been manufacturing and selling turntables for almost ten years – they’ve sold over 100,000 turntables and have helped countless homeowners improve their setup with guides on their website.

Carter said it is best to avoid placing objects between the listener and the speakers – it’s intuitive to have a clear path for sound waves, but Carter called it a “common mistake.”

“You can put a big speaker in a corner with a piece of furniture in front of it. And it’ll really ruin the experience,” Carter said.

John Smedley, a professor of physics at Bates College, said “if I have a speaker, [the sound] it doesn’t just come out like a laser beam, it spreads out.“

Bottling that spread, which is called dispersion, will drastically alter how the sound is perceived. “You want the sound to spread out and fill a space,” Smedley said.

Carter said that common household objects like plants won’t make a big difference, but speakers that generate sound from the front and back should not be placed against a wall, as they often are.

Check your speakers’ specs to see if it has a rear baseboard, like the speakers UTurn Audio sells, do.

Powering up

“You have to you have to keep in mind the source,” Carter told The Sun.

“If you really want to take sound quality seriously, you don’t want to just be streaming YouTube,” though he noted YouTube has recently upped its sound quality.

Experts like Carter advise against playing music from resources that use digital compression – a computer science term for reducing the complexity of files at the cost of staying true to the recording.

Digital compression is one battle in the streaming wars between mainstream music libraries like Apple Music and exclusive, more expensive streamers like Tidal.

Upgrading your listening experience is achievable on a budget – a tweak to your furniture arrangement might be all it takes.

But all speakers – pricy or inexpensive – should be set up with care and thought so you can get the most out of your investment.

Speakers should be tilted inwards so that the sound waves converge on the listenerGetty Images – Getty