Independent buying guides
For listeners planning a stereo or surround setup in a real living room. Each guide answers one question, cites manufacturer specifications with the date they were checked, and shows the formula inside every cost and power calculator.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Channel counts are sold by the box, not by the room. Work out what your seating position can hear before deciding between 2.1, 5.1 and an Atmos layout.
Photo: Adamantios · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Purchase price is only the first line. Here is the five-year arithmetic for depreciation, electricity, import duty and the parts that wear out.
Photo: ProtoplasmaKid · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Care and repair
Styli, foam surrounds, electrolytic capacitors and firmware support all have a clock on them. Here is how to schedule each one instead of waiting for failure.
Photo: Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Applies a yearly retention rate you choose to a purchase price, and shows the cost of ownership.
value after n years = price x (retention rate) ^ n; cost of ownership = price - value
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Price divided by the number of wears you realistically expect, with cleaning and repair added.
cost per wear = (price + cleaning cost per year x years + repairs) / (wears per month x 12 x years)
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
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Photo: Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
How to tell genuine from convincing.
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Photo: VK1LW · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What things are made of, and how long that lasts.
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Photo: ProtoplasmaKid · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: Adamantios · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What holds value, and what does not.
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Photo: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Keeping it usable for years instead of months.
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Photo: Adamantios · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
This site earns money from advertising and, where disclosed, from affiliate links. That does not change the order of a comparison or the conclusion of a guide.
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