How To Build a Home Stereo Sound System For Under $1000: What to Buy

Table of Content

• Which Sound System Should I Choose?
• What kind of sounds is a Subwoofer best suited for?
• Home Stereo System Buyers Guide
• Bose Wave SoundTouch Music System
• rturia MiniFuse 4 review: No-nonsense audio I/O
• How to Configure a HiFi Desktop Audio System
• Connecting Passive Speakers to an Amplifier
• Best Wireless Speakers for TV

Prices valid at time of publication but are subject to change. Olivia was previously TechRadar's Senior Editor - Home Entertainment, covering everything from headphones to TVs. Based in London, she's a popular music graduate who worked in the music industry before finding her calling in journalism. Many source devices – including smartphones and smart TVs – come with voice assistants built in or at least work with them, too. Wireless speaker systems from the likes of Sonos and Bowers & Wilkins are very convenient, eschewing annoying cables and instead relying on your home Wi-Fi network to communicate with each other.

Two brands that you might want to consider, in addition to Focal, are Adam and JBL. The home is a special place to connect with family and friends. A great way to share this special place and time is by listening to music and watching your favorite films together. If you’re getting into vinyl for the first time, or have finally dusted off your old record collection, you’ll need a really nice turntable. Sony’s PS-LX310 earned a place in our home audio stereo system because of its exceptional versatility. These days, we are mostly streaming music wirelessly via Bluetooth and playing using Spotify or Apple Music.

Which Sound System Should I Choose?

Wireless signals are a little less reliable than USB and RCA connections, but new systems will generally still be pretty reliable. You don't need to worry about losing connection on a wireless hook up, but it is always good to be able to fall back onto a wired power input. No matter which way you slice it, sound quality is endlessly crucial for a home stereo system.

Have a read through our buyer’s guide, where we narrow down the options for you. We have covered the most important features to look at when purchasing a home stereo system. When we go through the process of selecting our products, we consider multiple factors. We look at the price of the product, the performance, what customers have said, the product specifications, the brand’s reputation, and their previous products. The Bose Home Speaker 500 adopts a futuristic design style, with an LCD panel on the front that displays album artwork, track title, and other information about what’s currently playing.

What kind of sounds is a Subwoofer best suited for?

As we’ve mentioned, the beauty of hi-fi is that you can tailor it to your needs. These days a lot of turntables come with built-in phono preamplifier — we call these "integrated" turntables — which allows you to connect the them directly to an amplifier or powered speaker. A phono preamplifier, also known as a phono stage, is a necessary component in any turntable hi-fi system. First, it takes the extremely weak signal from the turntable's phono cartridge and pre-amplifies on the way to the amplifier, so your speakers can play it at a reasonable volume.

I assume that “rather special experience” is seeing your bank account significantly reduced, without any corresponding improvement in sound quality. No piece of audio equipment that has ever been made, or will ever be made, can “convey the feelings embedded in your music”. If you buy equipment on that basis, you are almost certainly purchasing a product that pleasingly colors the sound, rather than reproducing it accurately. Either way, purchasing a solid amplifier is arguably a more crucial component than the turntable itself – it can serve you well for decades, while other components tend to get replaced. The cartridge is one of the core elements that contribute to the overall sound of your turntable system. Its role is to transform the physical vibrations of the stylus’ movement within the grooves into transmittable electrical signals.

Home Stereo System Buyers Guide

We also point out what to expect from overall clarity and sound quality. Are you looking for something simple, or are you looking for something advanced with loads of features? Some home stereo systems now connect to your WiFi network, which means they can integrate with systems like Alexa or Google Assistant. Some home stereo systems even have their own apps they can connect to. Because the speaker landscape is constantly evolving, we attempt to update this article regularly and adapt it to the current market. We’ve started to include smart home speakers, which have started to replace a lot of portable home stereo systems.

Like any good home stereo system, you can connect everything via Bluetooth. Also, it's made strong using an MDF board instead of a particle board like many other brands. Why We Liked It - Although the Micro Music Stereo System may not qualify for a budget list, it's pretty affordable for a unit of this caliber.

Because of this larger cabinet size, the Tower Speaker can have larger speaker drivers—and more of them—than can fit into a bookshelf-sized cabinet. This is especially true at the higher end of the cost spectrum. Ultimately, the type of speaker you choose will determine what fits your needs and what you’re comfortable spending. Some factors to consider include the size of the room, the type of music you want to listen to, and your budget.

Again, there isn’t too much you need to worry about in building a system for home use under normal listening conditions. Most modern components will work relatively well with one another. This should be all you need to get up and running with your Home Stereo System. Speaker specifications will frequently mention a suitable power rating, indicating what power output you should be looking at for your amplifier.

Being a feature we’ve never seen before on a smaller speaker like this, I must say I really like this, though it may not add much value to some. These products offer a variety of inputs and listening options to meet any need you could have. Because there has been a shift away from CD support, we have included products that are based instead around assistant support. If you’re still a bit unsure on what you need, make sure you check out our video below.

As in all relationships, there are things that are flexible and those that are not. So the following are six must-follow rules in setting up your hi-fi system if you want that marriage to work the best it can. Good speakers are complicated to set up, usually needing a large stereo receiver into which you can plug everything.