Practical Optimisation

A loudspeaker two inches from the ideal position. A listening seat chosen for the sofa, not the sound. A display fighting reflections from a window nobody thought to curtain. None of these show up as a fault — they show up as a system that never quite delivers what its specifications promise, in a way that’s easy to blame on the equipment and much harder to trace to the room.

This book closes that gap, without spending anything. It teaches a single method — observe honestly, measure before adjusting, change one thing at a time, verify the result — then applies it in full, to placement, to bass and calibration, and to the room-correction systems that help enormously once the room has already been given a fair chance.

This is the volume the series’ governing principle is named for. Optimise First, Upgrade Second is not an aspiration here — it’s a method, applied before a single piece of new equipment is considered.