Looking to score a brand new stereo system but unsure about where to start? Nathan shares some expert advice on setting up the perfect stereo system to suit your home entertainment needs.

Video Transcription

Hi there, I’m Nathan. Everything that I do in my apartment happens while I listen to music. So I spend a lot of time putting together for me what is a perfect home stereo system. I listen to a lot of viola, mp3, I even listen to tapes and A tracks. Now every single day of the year they come out with new types of stereo equipment so it is almost pointless to make a video about what specific components you should buy. So what I’m going to do is give you a general sense of the types of things you need for basic stereo system and then some kind of cool things you might now know about. For example, if you got a hundred grand lying around you could buy a solid glass turntable with a laser instead of a needle. So your records never actually get touched by anything and will last just about forever. But we’ll get to that in juts a second here in this Big Stereo System! So the very first thing you have to do when getting ready to build your home stereo system is make sure that you have a good sense of what static you are trying to create because listening to the music isn’t juts about having music playing in the background where you shop vegetables. It’s also about kind of the vibe you are trying to create in your apartment or house. So you are going to ask yourself what type of stereo look you’re going for. Are you more of a Gregg Brady—I have the biggest room in the house and it is in the basement and this is like my cool like wood panel setup? You know more like a wreck room type of thing or you like an Austin Powers kind of lava lamp and like white bubbly 70s cool type of stereo person? Or you are looking for something like really futuristic? Then maybe you ordered from Japan and like only three people have. So depending on your budget and how cool you are you can then kind of setup the look you are going for. For me, I think Viola is a really important part of creating a good stereo look because first of all if the model is kind of a soft color is a nice way to decorate and it also makes you seem more interesting than you actually are. I myself am a pretty much boring guy. I spend a lot of time by myself and I don’t read. So by buying a bunch of vinyl, it does not actually mean that I listen to it or that I listen to it or that I have any idea what’s on it, but you know what it says? It says cool—it says I’m cool. Melats reviewed the very basic components that you need for your stereo. First of all and most importantly is the receiver. A lot of the time you can buy any different number of types of receivers. You have the radio that goes there and that is kind where all your components plug in and you can change channels if you want to listen to maybe your record player or your CD player and that is the kind of the centerpiece of your stereo system. And then you have a bunch of components which you could really switch up. On my stereo I have a turntable which is a techniques vertical turntable that opens up and holds the record in you can pick tracks on it by the tape player that goes into the receiver and I also have an eight track. So, depending on what type of musical medium you are listening to that is what goes in your receiver. Now when you are listening to you’re stereo there is all sorts of different types of speaker systems that you can have. Basic speaker system has woofers which are kind of the lower tones and the bigger speaker and then you have the tweeters which are the high notes and then sometimes you need a sub-woofer which actually pushes air if you hold it over you can feel the air blowing on it and that is really the base tones and that goes on your floor somewhere. That is for a really dynamic sound. You are going to need a couple pieces of peripheral items to make sure that you have a healthy and long living stereo system. Some really basic ones are just compressed air so you can blow a dust out of everything and you can always figure how to pop the top off of your stereo to get at any wires and anything. They need to some cleaning if you have a record player there is a felt brush in any number of different fluids that you can clean the records for and that will help the records last a long time and sound much better. And you are also probably going to need some sort of power bar to plug all your different plug ins—depending on how shiny you want them and everything maybe a little Windex if you are cleaning something that is flexi-glass or plastic you should buy a cleaner that specifically works for that because you don’t want it to get dull or foggy over time. So there you go, you are well on your way to having a cool stereo system that functions and provides all of your music needs. I myself I’m going to take a little time to sing some karaoke and scratch some hip hop music because when you spend a lot of time with stereo system you start doing things like that. There is a fine line between cool and nerdy and you are looking at it. “L” is for the way you look at me.