Most hi-fi advice asks you to trust somebody’s ears. We take what manufacturers publish, apply published acoustics standards, and show you the working.
The tools
Every tool takes your actual room and your actual shortlist, shows the arithmetic underneath, and names the standard each figure comes from.
Pick your speakers and amplifier. See the peak level your system really reaches at your seat, measured against a real calibration standard, and how far back you could sit before it runs out.
Open the calculator →Enter your room, sloped or vaulted ceiling included. See where every speaker goes, whether your receiver can drive the layout at all, and exactly which channels need an outboard amplifier.
Open the planner →Specifications transcribed from manufacturer sources, with the measurement conditions attached, the cross-brand incompatibilities flagged, and the gaps left visible as gaps.
Browse the data →What you are getting
That sounds like a weakness to put on a homepage. It is the entire method. There are claims whose truth depends on who makes them, and claims whose truth does not. We only publish the second kind, because you can go and check them.
Recent findings
Unglamorous work that appears to be nobody else’s job.
Denon prints “Multichannel Pre-out: Yes (0.2)” for a receiver with zero main-zone pre-out channels. The $849 model can take an external amplifier. The $1,299 model cannot.
SpeakersManufacturers use four different measurement conventions. On 22 of 300 comparisons the corrected order is the opposite of the printed one, including two speakers made by the same company.
AmplifiersThree out of fifteen. Meanwhile 14 of 18 speakers that publish a minimum impedance drop below 4 ohms, and one sold as an 8-ohm speaker dips to 2.9.